Under the Silent Stars
by Alveric
Summary: Encountering a sleeping behemoth so close by, Sam and Cam adjust to their new dynamic and SG-1 brave the tide of discovery to find a way to help those stranded on Destiny, while forces rise to battle the Tau'ri. Sequel to 'The Ninth Chevron'. Cam/Sam
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 1**

RAF Middle Wallop, Hampshire, August 18th, 1940

Cameron sat out in the summer sun, gazing out over the ranks of Supermarine Spitfire Mk. Is belonging to No. 609 Squadron RAF, and the kids of whom he was in charge. They were playing cricket on the grass, a game even more laid back than baseball. Cam had to appreciate a sport which resolutely stopped play for lunch and tea. Cam trained them and led them in the skies against the Nazis as Flight Lieutenant Daniel Carter, a 'Canadian' volunteer. Officially, Americans were not allowed to take part in the hostilities breaking out in Europe. The Neutrality Acts saw to that. That didn't mean much to Cam. He only knew that Ba'al was dead. He'd killed the Goa'uld himself, shot him in the head in the cargo hold of the Achilles as he stepped through the Stargate being transported across the North Atlantic to America. Cam had then dumped his corpse into the ocean. The snake hadn't even had time to lose the smug grin after stepping through the event horizon before seeing Cam pointing a machine gun at his face and ending him. Cam only knew Ba'al was dead. And so was Sam. His Sam was dead. He'd saved the world and his Sam was dead. He'd saved the galaxy and his Sam was dead. Sam was dead.

The klaxon wailed out over the field and he sprang to his feet, running towards his Spitfire as mechanics and ground staff poured around it and over it, preparing it for flight. Cam was already dead. He knew that. It only mattered how and when it happened now. If he had any say, it would happen in a way that would make Sam proud. He knew how she'd feel about him just giving up, so he was going to go down swinging.

"Flight Lieutenant Carter!" He turned his head at the call and saw one of his wingmen running up. He couldn't suppress the smile at the way the Brits said 'lieutenant'.

"What is it, Hodgkins?" he asked the youngster, barely trained, and now about to fly off to face German Messerschmitt Bf109s over the Channel.

"Squadron Leader Morley wants to see you, sir." He pointed off towards one of the other flights where his squadron C.O. was standing talking to some of his flight leaders. Graham Morley was the man who knew the most about Cam, or 'Daniel Carter' as he went by. He knew he was American, and older than the thirty-eight he claimed to be, though Cam doubted the young man in his late twenties suspected the grey hair at Cam's temples was the only indication he was physically fifty-one years old. He also knew that Cam's flight experience was something he couldn't begin to fathom, and he respected that, using it to create tactics and strategies that would keep their casualties as low as possible. He'd seen first hand Cameron's skill behind the stick. When Morley asked how he managed to be so accurate with his wing-mounted Browning 303s, Cam had simply told him that he could hit something moving at three hundred miles an hour in his sleep. It was moving in slow motion to him unless it was going over six hundred miles an hour. Cam knew that would probably confuse the man, nothing yet available to the air forces of Europe could fly that quickly, but that's what his reflexes and reaction times were based on. And anyway, it wouldn't be long before such aircraft were available, both the Brits and the Germans were working on jets.

"Right. You make sure the flight is ready to go, Hodgkins." He patted the Flight Officer on the shoulder and jogged over to his younger friend. He watched as the other flight leaders around the man broke off to rejoin their own flights. Cam didn't usually have to speak to Morley before a sortie. The man trusted his judgement and skills implicitly. He brought his flight back alive, and made sure Germans didn't. Cam had, after all, taught him a lot about being a fighter jock, USAF style. "You rang, Graham?" He threw Morley a quick salute which was returned nonchalantly.

"I did, Old Man." Morley grinned and clapped a hand over Cam's shoulder. "Just called you over to tell you to go ahead with what we discussed. I'm tired of going back to Fighter Command with new tactics and being politely ignored." Cam nodded and smiled. "Good hunting, Daniel." Cam shook the man's hand and turned back to head to his plane. He'd never have guessed he'd one day be flying Spitfires in anger. They had nothing on the birds he'd flown in the past, or future as the case may be, but there was something about them. They were iconic after all. Sure, the Hawker Hurricane was the workhorse, the real hammer of the RAF's fight against the Luftwaffe, but it was the Spitfire that would become its symbol. He walked over to the huddled group of pilots waiting for his return.

"Squadron Leader wants us to use the new formation today, lads, the new tactics too. Just like we practiced, understood?" Cam waited until all of them had rattled off a 'yes, sir' before resuming. "Today's going to be a 'mare, boys, I want all of you sharp. Watch your wingman's six, got it? All of you will return today." He gave them each stern looks filled with warning. "Saddle up, folks!" he dismissed them in his usual manner. None of them asked him how he knew today was going to be awful, they knew better, Flight Lieutenant Daniel Carter just knew these things.

He reached his plane and climbed up towards the cockpit, staring out into the clear blue Hampshire sky. Today was going to be a tough day alright. More men would die today, on both sides, than on any other during this air campaign. August the 18th would later come to be known as 'The Hardest Day'. He didn't care if it was his last, he was just going to make sure his boys made it home

* * *

Stargate Command, October 2005

Sam stepped out of Landry's office to find a familiar face waiting for her. Cameron was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He grinned at her with a twinkle in his eye before straightening up from the wall and walking towards her.

"Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, did you think you could get onto this base without me finding out about it?" His embrace was warm and she was glad it kept him from seeing her eyes as she struggled to contain the sudden rush of emotion seeing him alive and well had brought up in her. She clutched at the back of his BDUs and held on tightly.

"It's really good to see you again Cam. You had me worried, you know?" At her words he sighed and let his chin rest on her shoulder for a moment. Cam had nearly died on P8X-412 after SG-1 encountered a Prior visiting the planet spreading the word of Origin with a little smattering of plague for seasoning.

"Well, I don't mind telling you I was a little worried there myself." he said softly. Sam knew Cameron wouldn't let her go until she pulled away. It was his way of allowing her to regain her composure. If she was forced to admit it to herself she held on for a little longer than was necessary. The corridor was empty for some unspeakable reason and she hadn't seen Cameron since before she'd left for Area 51. It wasn't long after that, that she heard he'd been assigned the lead of SG-1. It had been a bit surprising and a part of herself had instantly regretted her leaving the SGC. A part of herself she tried desperately to silence and keep at bay, that nineteen-year-old cadet crushing on her dashing senior. However, she found herself reading all of their mission reports as soon as they crossed her desk, even though she would have already learned everything that had happened on their travels, through alternate sources, before the file arrived. When she'd received that phone call from General Landry telling her that the team was stuck on a planet under quarantine, she'd had to force herself not to head straight for Cheyenne Mountain, instead mobilising the biological and medical research teams under her command. In the end it had made no difference what she had done, it was the Prior who had cured him. The next day she'd called Jack with her intention to return to SG-1, telling him she'd realised she just couldn't sit on the sidelines. She told herself that was her reason, that she couldn't watch her friends be in danger without being there herself, she told herself that was it, but she had a feeling it wasn't. Jack asked for a bit of time to arrange things, to find a replacement for her and she'd agreed, but the present situation had forced their hands. And now, she had no intention of returning to Nevada except to pack her things.

"You still owe me breakfast, by the way. From when I was on Prometheus just after you arrived at the SGC." She pulled away as he chuckled and smiled at her sheepishly. Then fell into step beside her as she led the way back to the elevator and her temporary quarters on base, so she could change out of her dress blues. "I won't accept food from the commissary either." She looked at him pointedly.

"I know, I know. I will honour that. After we get back from the mission." He smiled that devastating smile of his and she was that nineteen-year-old cadet on her first day at the Academy all over again. He'd been all mock-glares that morning, but something about his features told her he would have a killer smile. She'd been right. He'd spent the next two years keeping her sane, during her gruelling first year, he'd been her rock, then making sure she didn't burn out from the accelerated pace she was taking through the Academy. He'd pull her out of the labs she'd ensconced herself in, or the library where she was looking up some finer point of military history, and sometimes had forced her to eat and get some sleep. She'd thought at the time he was doing it because he'd been ordered to by the Superintendent, that he'd been assigned as some sort of baby-sitter for the Air Force's prized future asset. She'd thought that until she'd seen the look in his eye in '92 when she'd told him she was taking a posting at the Pentagon. When she saw that look of disappointment, she'd realised one of his driving ambitions was to see her become an astronaut, as much as becoming one himself, and he'd thought her taking that job meant she was throwing it away for a research position. She'd wanted so badly to tell him what she was _really_ going to be working on. They reached the elevator and she punched in the number for sublevel 25 and smiled when he looked at her.

"I'll hold you to that. Somewhere nice in town. Where they serve some real coffee." She nearly laughed at his sly look. "What?"

"Sam, you realise I won't give up until you rejoin SG-1, right?" He'd turned to face her and was leaning in a little closely. She kept smiling at him, but she was in danger of blushing at his proximity. She cursed that seventeen year crush, some vestiges of which she obviously still harboured. "I have no intention of letting you leave for Nevada except to pack your things." She turned her gaze from his as the doors opened at their destination and she gave a small sigh at the reprieve.

"I believe you, Cam, but I won't make it easy." she replied, already knowing her resistance was gone.

* * *

563 km north of Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, August 1st, 2008 (alternate timeline)

"Mayday! Mayday! This is Colonel Cameron Mitchell. Mayday! Mayday!" Cam called into the radio again for the umpteenth time that day. He was walking beside Sam through the stark, ethereal beauty of the Arctic Ocean ice pack. Frozen fields of jagged ice thrusting up out of the smooth, hard-packed snow. The wind shaping the upthrust ice into abstract sculptures of blinding white and light blue. Having returned from the Tok'ra homeworld by Stargate, they were surprised that instead of finding themselves at the SGC they came out into the frozen hold of a ship buried in ice with temperatures dropping precipitously. Immediate escape to the outside became of paramount importance, but the only method open to them, the concussive explosion of C4 opening a shaft to the surface, dislodged the ship from its icy prison and spurred its belated plunge into the depths of the sea. Climbing their way out after procuring some World War II era foul weather gear from a crate of emergency equipment, they found themselves under the darkness of a sunless sky with Daniel unable to walk, his foot having frozen in his boot after a quick submersion in the icy water. Quickly donning the impermeable leather jacket, trousers and boots lined with fur, Cameron and Sam set off in hopes of finding help, suspecting there was none to be had. The sun re-emerging from behind the Moon after the partial eclipse they arrived under, had revealed endless miles of ice ahead of the two Air Force officers.

It had been three hours since they'd left Daniel back where the Achilles had sunk, but he couldn't spare the archaeologist much thought. Sam wasn't doing well. Physically she was fine, but emotionally she was having a tough time. Intellectually she knew that the timeline was different, that what they had to do was find a way of reversing what Ba'al had done, but that still didn't change the fact that she'd just watched one of her best friends die, or that she'd left another to most likely die somewhere out in the middle of the Arctic Ocean icepack. Whenever he got a glimpse of her eyes they were haggard and desperate. She stumbled, slipping on some less-than-solid snowpack, and fell to one knee. Cam quickly went to her and pulled her up, but didn't let go, instead he forced her to look at him. The wind was blowing the fur lining of her hood across her cheek. Over the woollen mask pulled up over her nose, he could see her eyes glistening. He brought one of his hands up and cupped it against the side of her hood. "Listen to me, Sam. We'll get out of this, I promise. We'll find a way to beat Ba'al."

"How can you say that? We have no idea where we are, or where the nearest outpost of civilisation is, or even if we're going the right way." She was gripping the front of his foul weather jacket in her mitts and shaking him weakly. "As far as we know it could be just us on a dead planet, bombarded from orbit by the Goa'uld decades ago!" She'd moved up to thumping her fists against his chest. He let her. "We left Daniel to die. Jack's dead! How can you say we'll get out of this?" Her fists stopped and pressed against his chest and he bundled her into his arms for an embrace before pulling away and cupping both sides of her head so she couldn't look away from him.

"I can say that 'cause the one person I trust more than anyone in this universe is still alive. And I will do everything I can to make sure that person gets a chance to find a way to fix this." He was holding her a little tightly, but she was trying to look away from him and he wasn't about to let that happen. "I will fight 'til my dying breath, Sam, to give you that chance, but you can't give up! I trust you with my life. With my future. Can you trust me with yours?" He moved his hands down to her shoulders and she looked down, bowing her head, shaking slightly. She leaned forward so her head pressed against his chest, between her still clenched mitts. Finally, he heard a soft, strangled half-whisper.

"Yes." She looked up and her eyes were shimmering. He passed a mitt gently over them. She couldn't afford to tear up in this cold. She closed her eyes and leaned against him again, wrapping her arms around his waist. Holding her in his arms filled him with the need to protect her, to get her to where she needed to be. It had always been his mission, ever since he'd met her at the Academy. She was someone who could change the fate of the galaxy. And she'd have to, for them to get out of this one. He pulled back and lifted her chin with one hand so she could see his eyes.

"I'll get you off this ice, Sam. Stay with me until then." he pleaded. She nodded and he pulled on her elbow to get her moving again. An hour later the terrain looked identical as it had for the last several hours. Sam was starting to flag, but she was still moving. She'd started getting a bit lippy and sardonic which was a good sign as far as he was concerned. Finally she stopped and let her hands drop to her knees, bending over and huffing loudly. Cam grabbed her elbow again. "Sam, we've got to keep moving." He saw her eyes roll and she tilted her head.

"Why? If we're going to freeze to death, here's as good a spot as any, isn't it?" She flapped an arm to indicate their general vicinity. Cam could tell she just wanted to gripe a little so he played along. He favoured their immediate locale with some cursory scrutiny.

"Uh, I don't like this spot." He tilted his head and patted her arm lightly.

"Cam, come on." she whined. He liked the glint he saw in her eyes. "What is the point? There's no one around for hundreds of-" She stopped when she realised he wasn't looking at her, but over her shoulder and turned to see what had his attention. "What is that?" Cam grinned slightly behind his mask. It was their ticket off the ice. He motioned to her and they started jogging towards the two figures in the distance.

* * *

Apollo Crater, Luna, August 2010

Sam looked out the forward viewport of the jumper as Cam guided it over the smooth, dark basalt mare nestled inside the inner ring of Apollo Crater. They had set out from Selenis, tucked away inside Jarvis Crater on the eastern edge of the mare, and were flying to the high ridge at the western side of the inner ring. Carved into that ridge, about halfway up its face was a small hanger bay, which Selenis told them led to the archive storage facility for the base.

Ever since they'd arrived at the Alteran lunar facility one thing had been obvious. It wasn't finished. Construction was certainly complete, but the facility itself wasn't done. Most glaring was the Ancient database, which was woefully light on actual data. Selenis explained the reason for this was that the connection to the backup archive had been taken offline before the facility's automated construction had completed. As a result the base had been unable to retrieve anything from the archive, apart from that which had already been transferred from it manually by the engineers in charge of construction, namely engineering and medical information. The Alterans had in fact abandoned the facility before construction was completed, seemingly around the time Atlantis left Earth for the Pegasus galaxy.

As a result, Selenis was a facility with no history or knowledge of its purpose. The information in its banks was certainly amazing enough, but considering it didn't even include a Stargate address database or any information about nine symbol addresses it wasn't currently of use to them in their mission to aid those stranded on Destiny. It did have a list of Supergate addresses, presumably to allow for raw materials to be shipped to the facility during its construction. This list had proved helpful the previous month when they attempted to intercept the Lucian Alliance's incursion attempt on Destiny. Since then SG-1 had been back on Selenis for a little over three weeks. A small team of engineers and scientists had joined them, but Sam was still doing the bulk of the expert work, and it was decided that the time was right to ascertain the status of the archive outpost. In order to do that, she had commandeered Cam's piloting skills and a jumper with anything she could conceivably need to diagnose and perhaps effect repairs packed inside, and set off for the ancillary outpost west of Selenis. Of course, there was an ulterior motive for it just being the two of them in this jumper flying out over the desolate, stark beauty of the Lunar landscape. She reached across and lay a hand on the smooth material of Cam's Alteran designed integrity suit, he turned his head and smiled at her.

"Something on your mind, Dr. Carter?" His playful grin made her smile. She tilted her head and regarded him for several moments.

"Just that I think, I'd better watch my back at the next Academy reunion I go to." She kept a straight face when she said it, but the corners of her mouth were creeping up.

"I'll keep an eye on your six, Sam. Don't you worry." Cam chuckled lightly and his eyes sparkled. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'm sure you will, and I'm sure you'll take full advantage of the view, but I think that may only contribute to my problem." She stood up and came to stand behind his seat, wrapping her arms around him and kissing the top of his head. "I'm fairly certain every woman from the Thirty is going to be sharpening her combat knives when she finds out who I'm going with."

"Oh? Who's the lucky guy? Or Gal? I'm an open minded sort, you know." he deadpanned and she pulled at his cheeks as he laughed. "Ow ow ow, okay! Okay! Sheesh. I'm sure Jackson's gonna have a lot of fun at- ow ow ow!" She resumed pinching his cheeks at his continued joke and tilted his face up to look into his eyes as she then soothed his aching flesh with her fingers. "Like I said, I'll watch your six, literally and figuratively." She smiled and returned to her seat. They were still an hour or so away from their destination, it was hard to judge distances on the Moon. The horizon was much closer than they were used to and it skewed their sense of perspective something fierce. To think she was flying over the Moon! She could see Cam watching her from the corner of her eye and she turned to him with a questioning look.

"Something on your mind, Colonel Mitchell?" she recycled his earlier question.

"You want me to stop for fifteen minutes so you can put your boots down on the surface, don't you?" He smiled at her and she really shouldn't have been surprised. When they'd finally gotten together after he asked her out to dinner that day on the base they'd quickly developed a sort of unspoken rapport, as if they could read each other completely. Sam mused it must have had to do with knowing each other for over twenty years, over thirty if you counted that Memorial Day BBQ in McLean, over eighty counting the time aboard the Odyssey. Maybe her whole life if you wanted to count his alternate self's presence at her birth which still filled her with a little bit of awe. So his ability to read her like a book seemed natural if you simply considered that now they weren't denying their feelings for each other or the connection between them. They could have entire conversations using only body language and the knowledge they had of each other. That _really_ annoyed Daniel.

"Yes I do, I've always wanted to set foot on Luna itself." She smiled as he keyed in his comm.

"Selenis, this is Mitchell, come in." He started looking for a smooth patch upon which to set the jumper down.

"Mitchell, this is Selenis, we read you." came Daniel's voice over the comm. "Anything wrong?"

"Nope, just Sam's got a hankerin' to leave a bootprint on the surface and I'll admit to wanting the same." He smiled at her and she got up to fetch their helmets as he came to hover over a spot and gently set the jumper down on the surface of the Moon. "We're setting down for a few here on the mare to take a quick stroll under the stars." Sam had slipped on her helmet already and was moving over to Cam with his.

"Copy that, Cam. You and Sam be sure to wrap up warm." Daniel's sign off was interrupted by Vala's indignant cry.

"And next time take us with you! Selfish jerks." Both Cam and Sam laughed at that. She pulled the comm from his ear and slipped the helmet over his head, twisting the collar with its comm and breathing equipment into the recessed fitting of the suit's shoulderguards.

"We will, I promise, Vala. Carter out." replied Sam, pressing the stud on her helmet over her ear. Cam checked the seals on her suit and turned around to let her check his before they positioned themselves around the rear hatch and depressurised the cabin. While they waited the few moments for the air supply to be evacuated from the rear of the jumper, Cam raised his arm and tapped a few commands into the display attached to his forearm, creating an open comm channel between just the two of them. She moved to stand by the hatch door and Cam pressed the control on the panel to lower it, she stepped out and hovered on the edge of the hatch ramp, looking down at the smooth, grey surface of Earth's Moon. She shook her head, realising how ridiculous her hesitation must be. She'd travelled to hundreds, _thousands_ of different planets and moons around stars so far away they couldn't be seen in the sky. She'd been to different galaxies, _plural_. Why did stepping on the Moon of her homeworld give her pause?

"It's been your dream to do this since you were a little girl, hasn't it?" Cam's voice spoke into her ear over the comm and she turned around slowly to look at him as he stood behind her. The look in his eyes made tears well up in hers. The look of pride in them, knowing it was pride in her that he felt, knowing he could cut through all her hesitation and doubt and immediately realise what was in the deepest recesses of her heart. She nodded and reached out her hands to him which he took. "Do you have anything special you want to say?"

"When I was a girl I wanted so badly to be an astronaut, to walk on the Moon. I've been to other galaxies, Cam. _We've_ been to other galaxies." She looked into his eyes, trying to let him know how deeply she felt for him.

"You got me into the 302 program, I joined the Stargate program for you. You took me to the stars, Sam." Cam's voice was husky with his own emotions and she could feel a tear roll down her cheek.

"And you brought me home, Cameron. You're the only person I could step out onto the Moon with now." She pulled him along as she backed off the ramp onto the fine, dusty surface. The construction of their Alteran suits allowed her to intertwine her fingers with his. His face took on a serious look for a moment, his eyes intense and dark. She rubbed her thumbs on the backs of his gloves, just watching him. He slipped his hands from hers and backed up a step or two, then held out his hand.

"Dr. Carter, may I have this dance?" She couldn't resist his eyes. She reached her hand out and lay her fingers in his palm.

"You may, Colonel Mitchell." She smiled and giggled when he pulled her in closely to him, she put her hand on his shoulder and he slipped his around her waist to hold her lower back.

They danced under the silent stars.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 2**

Selenis, Luna, July 2010

Sam looked over the balcony's railing from where she was standing by a console, interfacing her laptop into it, down towards the boys in front of the Stargate. She gritted her teeth slightly in annoyance. She loathed them. She really, really did. Vala lay a hand on her shoulder and she glanced over at her friend, her lips drawn thin. Seeing Vala's concerned look she closed her eyes and sighed. She gave a small smile and nodded, leaning forward and touching her mask to her friend's in gratitude. She looked over to Cameron and Daniel and walked down the stairs and across the smooth black tiled floor towards them with Vala looping an arm through hers. It wasn't their fault. Once they found out the base responded to spoken commands Daniel was all over it, he didn't have the ability to neurally interface with the base, but verbal communication was one of his strengths. Cam joined in, in part, Sam believed, to annoy Daniel. It really did annoy him that Cam spoke Alteran almost as well as he did, and knowing the base considered the fly boy as the senior member of their party thanks to his gene therapy only made things worse, but they'd been yammering on in Ancient for half an hour already and Sam had had enough.

"Can one of you please help me set up the translation interface? Some of us can't speak Ancient, and Selenis can't speak English." she groused, crossing her arms across her chest.

"I don't mind, but Samantha was about to start shooting at you. I quite like to listen to the two of you having so much fun." Vala smiled brightly, though it faltered at the look Sam gave her. "Oh, be honest, Samantha, you'd love to be able to do what they're doing." She hated to admit it, but it was mostly true. She groaned in frustration.

"Sam, you know we'll teach you whenever you want." Daniel offered with a small smile which just made her hate him at that moment.

"You guys don't get it! I'm horrible with languages!" she cried. "They were always my worst subject. Dad always used to tease me, saying I was lucky to learn English when I did because whatever made me a prodigy at everything, obviously made it so my brain wouldn't accept new languages." She sighed after letting it all out in a frustrated stream of babble.

"What are you talking about, Sam?" Cam came to stand closer to her and laid a hand on her shoulder, she looked into his eyes and saw his confusion. "You can speak Goa'uld just fine, and Jackson says that's a more difficult language to learn than Alteran." She raised a hand to brush her fingers on the back of his on her shoulder. She enjoyed that particular form of contact they often shared now.

"Only because of Jolinar." Sam stared off into the distance for a moment before returning her gaze to Cam. "When we were blended I gained access to a lot of the technical and linguistic knowledge she possessed. It helped me master Goa'uld technology and has stood me in good stead since with other advanced tech." She watched as Teal'c came to join the conversation at the mention of the fallen Tok'ra agent. "I also gained near fluency in Goa'uld, though there were huge gaps in the knowledge, gaps Teal'c had to help me fill."

"It took many years as I recall, Colonel Carter." the Jaffa warrior put in and Sam nodded gratefully at her friend.

"I still don't understand why Selenis has no translation facilities the way Atlantis does." Sam grumbled. They all glanced up as the base's distinctive lilt filled the 'gateroom.

"Selenis says it's because it's Ancient database is incomplete." Daniel translated. "Only data necessary during construction was available on-site, mostly engineering and medical sources. Certainly very few convenience functions such as automatic translation." Sam's mouth gaped open slightly in confusion.

"How did it understand what I said?" She glanced between Cam and Daniel while Selenis responded with a very long winded dissertation. Both men looked at each other for a moment.

"It's using me as a universal translator." Cam shrugged as Sam narrowed her eyes in disbelief. Daniel smirked ruefully before launching into a more detailed explanation.

"Selenis is able to use its neural interface with Cam, and the language centers of his brain, to understand the concepts of what you say as he hears and understands them." He shrugged. "Essentially his brain automatically translates what you say into Alteran so Selenis can understand it."

"Universal Translator." Cam crossed his arms and gave Daniel a look. The linguist just glared back.

"So it only works while Cam is in Selenis and a neural connection can be made." Sam posited and Daniel nodded. "Doesn't help us that much."

"Well, Jackson and I were discussing something earlier we thought might help you and those-" Cam started, but Daniel finished.

"The stubbornly mono-lingual." He was smiling in a very annoying way and Sam glared at him. Cam gave him a bit of a look as well before looking back at Sam.

"We've been working with the team creating courses with the Galaran memory device." When he mentioned the Galaran technology his eyes seemed to cloud over for an instant and Sam closed her hand over his lightly. Daniel took over after noticing the pause.

"We've already done a lot of work on a course for Alteran." he supplied. "It would give us a way to train new technical personnel in the language. And it would be very quick, at least to impart the knowledge. The way language works would necessitate some, I suppose you could call them, practical sessions." Daniel shrugged. "Listening to a fluent speaker to train your brain, so to speak." Sam was looking between the two of them with narrowed eyes.

"That would work for me too?" she asked at last.

"Don't see why not. I mean even Cam managed to learn Ancient the old-fashioned way, so it can't be that hard." Daniel said matter-of-factly to Cam's glare.

"Colonel Mitchell has demonstrated keen language skills in the past, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c pointed out with a small smile.

"That's right." confirmed Sam. "He picked up some conversational Arabic while we served in the Gulf in '91. Oh, and he spoke Mandarin with Shen Xaoyi, China's IOA rep. She was surprised by that."

"We were all surprised by that." Daniel said through a smile.

"Hey, I'll have you know I learned Mandarin, Japanese and enough Korean to allow me to properly order food while I was stationed in the Far East after Gulf War One." Cam had crossed his arms over his chest as he spoke of his accomplishments with pride. Sam smiled and rubbed his lower back as she stood next to him. He turned to look at Sam. "Watched a lot of TV while I was there."

"Did you learn watching those crazy endurance shows they have?" Daniel stifled a grin. Vala snapped her fingers.

"I've seen those! I thought it was rather barbaric to find the Tau'ri broadcasting torture sessions, until Sergeant Siler explained to me it wasn't torture at all." Vala's eyes lost their focus for a moment. "I'm still not sure I believe him. Some of the things I saw were very disturbing." She shuddered lightly and Sam patted her arm. "Why would anyone do those things unless under dire threat of something worse?"

"We don't disagree with you, Vala." Cam consoled her. "No, I didn't watch those, I watched... other stuff." Sam turned her head and looked at him appraisingly. She smiled knowingly and chuckled, which caused Cam's head to whip around to face her. He stared at her for several moments and Sam's breath hitched and her eyes widened slightly. She recovered quickly, trying not to give anything away, but it was too late. His eyes darted back and forth between hers and then roved over her features for several moments and she knew she was done for, so she simply quirked her eyebrow and smiled. He started shaking his head and wagging a finger in front of her face and even Teal'c was looking at him askance.

"Oh, no! Nuh-uh! No, Sam!" His lips drew into a hard line and his jaw clenched for a moment. "I don't believe it." He stared at her sternly. "You and I are gonna sit down and have a very serious talk about what's acceptable and what isn't in our relationship." She simply smirked at him. She could tell the others were getting worried. Vala came to stand beside them and tried to speak in the space between their masks.

"Um, could one of you clue in the rest of us who aren't able to tap into the Sam 'n' Cam telepathic network?" She was genuinely concerned and Sam turned to look at her with a smile, trying to indicate everything was okay. She turned back to Cam and she could see the disappointment in his eyes. She sighed and met his gaze forcefully, crossing her arms across her chest. This was a conversation they could not put off now.

"I'm sorry, Cameron, it's true." She tilted her head in expectation of his reaction to her admission. Cam's lips tightened into a thin line and his gaze became steely. He brought up his hand, a finger pointing up in warning before he shook it loose and pointed it at her with his jaw clenched. Vala was looking between both of them in great confusion and worry. "It was before I ever met you, Cam."

"We met in McLean in '78, remember?" he cried, his voice barely concealing his pain. She sighed and reached for him only to have him lean away from her. She narrowed her eyes at the move.

"And you forgot my name, remember that?" Her tone was somewhat hard-edged and he reeled as if struck.

"I was eight! You introduced yourself as Samantha! Girls were an alien species still. I never remembered girls' names. If you had introduced yourself as Sam-" He was trying to defend himself, but she wouldn't let him just rationalise it away.

"You would have remembered me as the girl with a boy's name." She tilted her head and regarded him coolly for a few moments until his shoulders slumped, she reached for him again and lay her hand on his shoulder. "As fondly as I now hold the memories of that day, I still count the Academy as when we truly met each other." He looked at her and this time his eyes were shadowed with confusion.

"But Sam... Seriously?" She nodded and he looked away for a moment. Soon enough Cam squared his shoulders once more to face her, his eyes hard. "You realise what this means, don't you?" She nodded. There was no getting around it.

"Yes, and I'm prepared to accept that." she replied, holding his gaze until he nodded himself.

"What? What does it mean?" cried Vala, nearly in a panic. Daniel and Teal'c were similarly confused and worried, unable to fathom what was happening between their two friends.

"It means Cam and I have some movie nights to plan." Sam grinned as Cam shook his head with a wry smile and let his fingers brush her facemask over her cheek. Vala and Daniel looked between them in bewilderment. Teal'c merely nodded and walked away.

"What just happened?" asked the raven-haired former thief and Sam took pity on her, walking over to hug her friend who accepted it in her confusion. Just then the base's feminine voice piped up in Ancient and Cam and Daniel tilted their heads up then looked at each other as their eyes lit up. Sam really was going to have to learn Ancient.

"Communications have been restored." Daniel enlightened them and Sam grinned, heading up to the balcony to the left of the gate which seemed to house all the facility's controls. The opposite side seemed dedicated to the 'gate systems and probably ship and traffic control. There was some overlap in the systems, but there seemed to be a clear distinction between the set-up of both balconies. Cam joined her by the communications station and entered a command sequence. Sam grabbed her laptop and brought up some information for him which he used before keying in a final sequence and lifting a hand to the comm in his ear.

"Stargate Command, this is Mitchell, come in." Cam looked at her with a smile and they all waited for a few moments before a static pop was heard over the comm.

"Colonel Mitchell!" Chief Master Sergeant Harriman's surprised voice held an edge of worry which wasn't lost on either of the Air Force officers. "The General will be here shortly, sir."

"Thank you, Walter." replied Sam. It took several more seconds, but eventually they got the boss.

"SG-1, this is Stargate Command, it's good to hear from you." came Landry's gruff voice, sounding relieved and somewhat strained. She eyed Cam in alarm and he looked at her again showing he hadn't missed it.

"We bid you greetings from Selenis, General Landry." Cam tried to sound enthusiastic while he gave a very brief report. Sam was sure the General would let them get that much out of the way before springing on them what was concerning him so much. "We're not fully set up, but we have power thanks to some old batteries the builders left lying on a shelf. The 'gate room is on its way to fully optimal life support and the rest of the facility will follow afterwards. This place is a monster, sir, but one that's willing to let us check its fangs." It was true, Selenis had readily accepted them all as entitled to being there, and Cam himself as being in charge.

"That's great news, Mitchell, though I'm not really sure where I'll find the funds in my budget for yet another new base discovered by SG-1. I'm sure we'll manage." Landry was also trying to be enthusiastic. "You'll have to cut your visit short though, and go back at another time. General O'Neill needs you all at Homeworld Command. A situation's come up concerning Destiny." Sam's eyes widened. What could possibly have happened in the last two hours? She signalled Teal'c and Daniel and Vala and they all rushed off to grab any gear that they couldn't leave lying about. She was surprised to see a panel open in the console by her hand and a small device slide up. Cam nodded his head towards it and she grabbed it, looking over it.

"Understood, sir. SG-1 will be ready for transport in five." He pointed at the device and indicated she should tuck it away somewhere safe and she slipped it into her jacket. "We'll signal Odyssey with our beacon. I advise against sending any other teams here until we can debrief, General. This facility will automatically raise a shield over the 'gate now that there's power. We have a remote which will send a signal to lower it."

"Copy that, SG-1, Landry out." They looked over the balcony and spotted everyone stowing gear out of the way and gathering up equipment they might need to take with them. Sam laid a hand on Cameron's arm as a sudden thought struck her.

"Cam, we need to disable the DHD or this 'gate will override the one at the SGC." She sighed at his confused look. "DHDs in close proximity negotiate with each other for precedence when an incoming connection is detected. Since we have no DHD at the SGC..." She tilted her head and smiled ruefully.

"Right, well we can do that... can't we?" He tilted his head up as Selenis' voice cut in with a reply. "We can, not from here though." She followed him down the stairs and behind the 'gate to the opposite balcony. "Alright folks, we're heading out, everyone have all their stuff? All the lights off? Did someone check the oven?" Everyone confirmed they were ready and Cam turned to Sam and leaned his facemask against hers, speaking softly so only vibrations carried the sound between them as he worked at a console which looked to Sam like a larger version of Atlantis' DHD.

"Really, Sam?" He looked at her in disappointment, she shrugged slightly.

"I was young, Cameron." she offered in her defense. He drew his lips together tightly and shook his head as she smirked. "And I still think I'll prove my case." He rolled his eyes.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 52 days relative

Sam finished setting up her program and executed it. A bright light shimmered behind her and when she looked over, a cello along with a bow stood in its stand. She smiled. It had been so long since those few lessons she'd taken as a kid. She'd only decided to try out the instrument after she turned twelve. She had stopped after her mother's accident. Nothing seemed to matter after that. She pushed her chair over by the stand and sat down, positioning the instrument in front of her as she remembered. Muscle memory counted for something and she smiled.

She wasn't as pleased when she began moving the bow over the strings. It sounded awful. Did she make a mistake setting up the Asgard Core? Or was she just that bad right now? She struggled through the little she remembered of the drills she had done and lay the bow down across her lap and sighed. Well she wasn't going to give up after a single attempt. It was meaningless if she did. She picked up her bow and began passing it over the strings again. Just then her ears picked up Cam's distinctive running footfalls as he ran past the Core room the way he usually did in the mornings. She winced when she realised he could probably hear her strangling cats from the corridor, a suspicion which was confirmed when she heard his footsteps falter and stop. She grimaced. He'd probably tease her later, or worse get angry at her for wasting time, but she didn't care. She needed something to distract her from the work or she'd go crazy. If he couldn't handle that then he could just go take a long walk off a short pier.

She wondered why he hadn't resumed his running yet. There could be nothing interesting in listening to the awful sounds she was making with the instrument. It certainly wasn't music, but she could tell he was still outside. She tried for a sliding scale again and almost had it. She paused and sighed deeply. She forgot how much finger strength this took. Just then, she heard the squeak of Cam's trainers as he set off on his run again. Why he'd spent so long there she couldn't fathom. She stretched her neck slightly and put the cello back in its stand, laying the bow on its small hook. She returned her seat to the small table where her laptop stood. Time to get back to work.

* * *

Archive Storage Facility, Luna, August 2010

The hangar could only hold two or three jumpers. Access to it came from a shaft, the entrance of which was concealed under an overhang in the ridge face of the western edge of the inner ring of Apollo Crater. They had to cycle through a large airlock which was obviously designed as a fail-safe system in case the forcefield protecting the hangar failed, which it had. It took them a lot of time and a great deal of effort to rig some power into the airlock's systems from the jumper's powerplant to cycle the lock. Once through, Cam parked the jumper in a bay close to the far end of the hangar. Sam stepped out of the back of the jumper into the pitch darkness. Much like Selenis the atmosphere was non-toxic, but unbreathable, temperatures were also low enough to be slightly dangerous to humans. Which made it a good thing they had decided to come wearing Selenis' Alteran integrity suits, even if the airlock hadn't made it a necessity. She swept her P90 from side to side, illuminating the depths of the hangar until she found the door Selenis had detailed in the schematics it had shown them. She had a cylindrical case, hanging from her shoulder by a strap, which contained a ZPM they'd retrieved from Selenis' stores in case the outpost's problem was purely a lack of power as Selenis' had been. Cam exited the jumper behind her, his shoulders weighed down with tool cases and diagnostic computers of various descriptions. Cam chuckled to himself, realising Sam did like making him do the heavy lifting while she ran around waving her gun.

"What is it?" she asked him, turning to face him with a puzzled look.

"Nothing, I just like how you protect me." He grinned and she came and gave his arm a playful slap.

"We're through here." She waited for him to move up to the door and check to see if it required some activation with his gene therapy. It slid open slowly at his approach which indicated there was at least a little power left in the facility. They nodded to each other and Sam led the way. There wasn't much to the facility, a communications and control room, a small set of quarters in the back with sleeping and food preparation facilities in case someone needed to spend a while there. Beyond that was the real meat of the place. A huge room with tall spires of crystal which shimmered in the light from her P90. They walked along a catwalk until they reached some stairs and made their way down. At the bottom of the room, according to Selenis' schematics, was a power management station. Sam checked it over when they found it, it held only a single roundel, under which they could see the dimly glowing ZPM, quite obviously teetering on the edge of maximum entropy. Cam nodded at Sam and lay down his equipment, sidled over to the console and activated it. "Remember to charge the panel's capacitors before you remove the ZPM, give us a little time to make a switch." Sam unslung the container off her shoulder and opened it, sliding out the Alteran power generator and holding it one handed so she could redirect the light from her P90 back to the console. Cam lay his hand on the control interfaces and the containment harness slipped out from its port when the roundel slid aside. Cam took out the spent ZPM and lay it on the ground, accepted the replacement Sam offered, and slid it into place. Using the controls, he had the harness slide back in and immediately the facility began coming back to life. Power thrummed through the crystal spires behind them, which now glowed brightly.

"Done. Want to let Daniel know so he can check the connection?" Cam asked and Sam nodded, raising a hand to a button on the side of her helmet which activated the radio link with the jumper.

"Selenis, this is Carter, come in." She lowered her head until the radio connection popped from the other end.

"Samantha, this is Selenis, we're ready at our end, how are things with you?" It was Vala who replied and Sam checked the console, using her newly acquired knowledge of Alteran to read that all the outpost's power diagnostics had come up in the green. Obviously something else was wrong.

"Vala, we've restored power and the computer here is indicating everything is A-OK over at this end. Is Selenis unable to make a connection?" Sam looked around the room, but indicated that Cam should head back to the control room to check things out there. She must have been looking for an ancillary console. Cam nodded and climbed back up the stairs to the control room. Checking over the controls he reactivated life-support which began recirculating the air immediately as well as starting the heaters going. He checked the communications console and found what could be the problem.

"Looks like the physical connection between Selenis and here might be severed, Sam." Cam cycled the display over several different screens, quickly checking off information. "Vala, does Selenis confirm the same?"

"She does. She says she still can't raise the outpost." Cam smiled and heard Sam chuckle over the radio. Vala was perfectly happy anthropomorphising the Alteran base. Cam and Sam who had faced Replicators directly were always slightly wary of anything that might smack of artificial intelligence. Selenis itself didn't seem aware of itself in the same way. It referred to itself with personal pronouns, but that may just have been its programming. It didn't seem to have a sense of self beyond knowing what it was as a physical entity. Vala didn't care about any of that and quite happily used its one gender-defining attribute and referred to the base with feminine pronouns.

"We're going to have to schedule some particular films for team movie night, Cam." Sam joked to him over the connection with Selenis and they heard Vala's confused muttering off mic and Daniel's amused reply.

"I agree, Sam. Vala needs to learn some caution." He chuckled.

"Just let her read the mission files on the Replicators." It was Daniel speaking over the radio. He did sound amused.

"Only the mission files I write are the least bit interesting." Vala sounded indignant and amused at the same time. "I swear, reading some of the files you guys have written I can't actually remember doing anything as boring as you describe me doing."

"I'll draw some pictures for you next time." Cam grinned and he could hear Sam laughing.

"I appreciate the effort, Cameron, I really do." Vala sounded sincere which brought out Daniel's laughter.

"~I have ascertained the integrity of my connection with the archive right up to the final junction. Can either of you confirm this, Dr. Carter, Colonel Mitchell?~" Selenis' crisp tones cut over the connection in Alteran

"~Power certainly is no longer a problem Selenis.~" replied Sam. "~How about communications, Cameron?~" Cam looked over the comm console and flicked the screen over into a diagnostic mode. He traced several screens of connections and eventually found something.

"~Diagnostics indicate a failure in the main trunk line just before that junction. It may be the connection is damaged or simply was never completed.~" Cam marvelled at how well Sam had taken to the Galaran course. Her accent was more similar to Daniel's than his, something he loved to tease her about.

"~Damaged is more likely, Colonel Mitchell.~" Selenis supplied. "~I have retrieved information from the archive previously, though before it was complete. The facility was taken offline to receive its full service upgrade and was set to be reactivated before my scheduled completion date. If it is the case that the main trunk line is damaged the facility's computer should direct you to the location of any materiels necessary to effect repairs.~"

"~Is there a chance the facility simply wasn't upgraded, Selenis?~" asked Sam with concern.

"~When you returned power to the facility, Dr. Carter, how many of the crystal storage matrices activated?~" enquired the Lunar base's computer.

"~All of them.~" replied Sam. "~Does that mean the archive is complete?~"

"~That is correct, Dr. Carter. The likeliest scenario is damage to the trunk line. It may be necessary to use a set of connection splicers to cut away a damaged section of the connection.~" Cam was really hoping Selenis' A.I. was safe. It was extremely helpful.

"~Let's get to work then.~" concluded Sam. "Cameron, Can you show me the way to this junction, please?" she asked. He started at a faint sound from one of the other consoles and noticed that life-support had been restored throughout the facility, except for the resealed hangar. He unsealed the latch at the chin of his helmet and raised it up and around into its stow away position at the back of his suit. The helmet folded and slid away, leaving only the face shield shining against the back of his head. These suits were very well designed. He went back to the diagnostic station and made some queries, a slot slid open and a small tablet rose up from its depths. He took it and headed back to the crystal spire room and down to meet up with Sam.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 3**

The Five Bells, Nether Wallop, Hampshire, December 1940

Cam watched his pilots shamelessly flirting with the local womenfolk as he sat at the polished oak bench set next to the window across from the bar. He leaned back against the straight wooden back of the bench and lifted the pint glass of stout to his lips and set it down again after taking a gulp. It had taken him some time, but he was starting to like the stuff. It was certainly different to the American beers he was used to. Morley slid into the bench opposite him with his own glass and smiled at his friend. Graham flicked his head over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow, Cam's eyes flicked over to get a look at what he was indicating and caught sight of the local village's school teacher, Mrs. Thornbury. Graham was incorrigible.

"She's been watching you most of the night, old chap. I don't mind telling you, if my old Miss from St. Swithen's looked like her I may have studied a little harder." He grinned as Cam just shook his head at him, ignoring the jibe, it was a different time. Eleanor Thornbury was a very intelligent and attractive woman, but there was no room in his life for that anymore.

"Don't let me stop you, Graham. I'm too old for that." He quaffed some more of his stout and sucked at his upper lip.

"Balderdash! You're the fittest 'thirty-eight' year old I've ever met. Fitter than me!" Morley's use of airquotes made Cam smile, it was a mannerism the younger man had learned from him.

"I'm not _that_ fit, kid. And you're not that_ unfit_." Cam still kept up his running regimen, though a lack of appropriate footwear was an issue. He stressed physical fitness to his pilots, and when they saw the manoeuvres he pulled on them in training they tended to become at least partial converts.

"Maybe so, but it's you that attracts most of the eyes when we're in the village, at _your_ age. It makes us look rather pathetic the way you fill out that uniform." At Graham's nod in his direction, Cam looked down at the blue RAF uniform he was wearing.

"Should have seen me in my dress blues." he muttered softly only to look up, startled at his friend's chuckle.

"There you go again with the cryptic references to your mysterious past." Graham shook his head and looked at him intently. "She's the reason, right? Why you won't look elsewhere?" Graham was talking about Sam. Cam hadn't been particularly conscious of it, but small mentions of his wife had crossed his lips from time to time as he talked with Graham in the past. He frowned slightly and sighed. "She's been gone ten years, am I right?" Graham's tone wasn't condescending or pitying. He was a young man himself, but he understood grief, warriors always did.

"Eleven years, one month, six days." Cam's features turned stony with pain. "You must understand something Graham. For the first decade I could not mourn her. I... couldn't afford to."

"Would she have wanted you to not move on?" Graham asked gently, a look of concern in his eyes.

"Ordinarily, no she wouldn't, though I would still have been stubborn. And these aren't ordinary circumstances." Cam looked out the window into the dark winter night. "She would agree with me."

"Because there's a war on?" Graham asked softly. Cam turned to look back at him and shook his head.

"It's complicated." Cam smiled when his friend scoffed at what he recognised as another cryptic reference.

"Will I ever know anything real about your past, Daniel?" Graham's eyes always glinted slightly when he used Cam's alias. He was fairly certain the younger man knew it wasn't his real name.

"No offense, Graham, but if I ever told you anything, you wouldn't believe me and/or you would call me crazy, then I'd have to shoot you, yada yada yada. It would be a whole mess of clichés coming to trample all over us." he said seriously and took another drink. Graham gave him a lop-sided grin and shook his head. "I like clichés as much as the next guy, but I'm just looking to get through this life as quietly as possible." Graham's smile turned very sombre when he said that. Cam suspected the younger man knew he didn't particularly care if he returned from any of his missions as long as the rest of his flight survived.

"Flight Lieutenant Carter!" Cam looked up at Hodgkins as the young pilot appeared by their table. Good timing, lad. The junior officer gave his Squadron Leader a respectful nod. "Sir."

"What is it, Hodgkins?" Cam's question brought the young man's attention back to him.

"Well, sir, I've been sent to ask if you are planning on attending the Christmas dance, sir." Hodgkin's eyes flitted to the left and Cam's gaze followed to catch sight of the group of women clustered around the bar and the gaggle of young RAF pilots propping it up. Among them were the honey-blond curls of the village's schoolteacher and Cam glanced at Morley when he heard the man's snigger. Graham gave him a significant look in return and Cam sighed, closing his eyes. He had no intention of leading the younger woman on, and neither did she, Eleanor was good company and appreciated his outlook. She was a widow herself, and truth be told, just wanted someone to talk to who wasn't going to ask her when she was going to get remarried. Not that any of his fellow officers believed that when he told them.

"I will, Hodgkins. I do like a dance." Cam replied at last.

* * *

Stargate Command, November 2009

He could feel her close by, all his senses reacted to her presence automatically. He might not know where he was just then, or even who he was... wait... Cam Mitchell, Bounty Hunter... but he'd know her. She was his everything. He let his head roll to the side he knew she was on and felt a warm hand close over his, her touch sent a current through him and his fingers closed over hers. He forced his eyes open and blinked several times, was it dark? Was he blind? He saw a shape move into his line of sight and blinked some more, focusing his tired eyes on her smile. That wonderful smile.

"You gave me a fright, Cam, a _really serious_ fright. Don't ever do that again!" Her tone was sharp, but with a hint of relief. Commanding, but with a touch of indulgence. He really felt it when her other hand came to brush at his cheek. So soft and gentle, smoothing away the pain he was feeling from his left shoulder all the way down that side of his chest.

"Won't..." He smacked his dry lips together and soon found a straw touching his lips from which he instinctively began to sip. "Not on purpose." He smiled lightly when she squeezed his hand hard.

"Ass." She leant down and lay her lips across his very gently, whispering very softly as she pulled away. "I love you, Cam." He looked at her and could feel the heat rising in his cheeks at her words and his eyes sparkled.

"You proposed to me." He chuckled at her embarrassed smile. "Will you get down on one knee now an' do it properly?" At her wide eyes and crimson flush he had to try very hard to keep from laughing. "No?" She shook her head vehemently. "I'll just need to do it myself then." At that she smiled broadly and leaned over and kissed him again.

"I have something to show you." She pulled at her collar and reached in to pull out a pair of silver chains, looping them up over her head and dangling them in front of him. There was a ring threaded on each one, one larger than the other, but both sharing common motifs. "This one is yours," she held one of them out a bit further, "I washed the blood off. _This_ one," she indicated the other, "is mine. Catherine Langford gave it to me twelve years ago. I had forgotten about it, about the story she'd told me." She smiled sadly at him, slightly chagrined. "I only remembered when I saw yours against your neck yesterday." He nodded his understanding. She held both rings together and lined them up in front of his eyes. "Do you see that? How the filigree aligns?" He nodded again, they formed the Stargate address for Earth. She held up the smaller of the two rings and rolled it between her fingers, looking at it as her eyes welled up with tears. "We must have picked these out together. In that lost timeline." Holding a hand to her lips she showed him the ring so he could read the inscription. "To my beloved Sam, who took me to the stars..." Her voice nearly broke as she recited it in a whisper.

"To Cam, my heart, who brought me back home..." he recited from memory in a husky whisper, tears rolled down her cheeks when he spoke. "I love you, Sam." She leaned down and brushed her lips against his again, placing their rings in his hand and closing hers over it, she cupped her other hand over the back of his and held on tight. He smiled at her for several moments before speaking again. "So... no macaroons?"

* * *

Seattle, Washington, January 2009 (alternate timeline)

Sam stepped out of her front door and walked to the post box at the end of the path in front of her house. She cradled a mug of coffee in one hand to fight off the chill of the winter morning and waved to her next door neighbour Marcy as she backed out of her driveway on her way into town. She opened the back of the mail box and fished out a small collection of envelopes and held them tightly against her chest as she made her way back inside. Shrugging off her coat and shoes she took the letters into the kitchen and sat at her breakfast table, with her feet up on another chair, and took a bite of her pancakes as she began shuffling through the collection of bills, circulars, and newsletters. She paused, nonplussed, as one envelope stood out. Not for what was on it, but for what wasn't. It had no postage, no address, and no return, just her name in a very familiar hand. She held her breath a moment and wondered what could have possibly possessed him to hand deliver something to her house. Surely he wouldn't have done it himself! She flipped it over and tore at the seal with a slender finger, pulling out a single sheet of paper which contained only the words 'Café Darclee, midday, dress nice, don't bring the shadows.' As if she needed reminding of that last part! She was going to kill him! Flipping over her wrist to check the time on her silver watch, a birthday present he'd given her the week before, she found she still had a couple of hours before she had to leave. Time enough to 'dress nice' for his murder, she supposed. Why was he back in Seattle so soon after they'd parted? She finished off her toast and took a last swig of her coffee before cleaning the dishes and mug and heading upstairs to get ready.

As midday rolled around she was walking along the north end of Fisher Plaza on John Street, looking up at the towering height of the Space Needle across Broad Street. Turning left around the cylindrical glass tower housing a sports bar and above that the offices of the local news radio station, which looked out over Broad Street from behind a giant laminated image of Ichiro Suzuki. She took no notice of it, not being a Mariners fan herself, and walked the short distance onwards to turn into Fisher Plaza proper and the rendezvous spot indicated in her hand-written invitation. She could already see him through the glass as he looked out from a table inside the café, he spotted her and waved when he saw she could see him, flashing her a winning smile. She grumbled to herself and pushed her square rimmed glasses higher up her nose. She could see him gathering up his coat and walking towards the door, obviously this wasn't their final destination. She stamped her booted feet in the cold and huddled into her jacket for warmth until she could selfishly have him warm her up himself. Ever obliging, the first thing he did was wrap his arms around her shoulders and kiss her tenderly, she slipped her hands inside his leather jacket, around his waist and across his back. She melted into his warm embrace. She didn't care why he was here anymore, that he was here and she was in his arms was enough. He cradled her face in his still warm hands and smiled The Smile, the one which set off all her alarms. She furrowed her brow and looked him in the eye. He met her gaze with his glinting blue eyes and turned her around back towards Broad Street and pointed her towards the Space Needle, leading her there as she slipped her arm through his when he put his hands in his jacket pockets and stuck out the crook of one arm for her. He'd gotten them reservations for lunch and she had actually never been to the SkyCity restaurant before.

The view from the restaurant was spectacular. As it slowly revolved from its vantage point under the Observation Deck, they were afforded views as diverse as the downtown Seattle skyline and the imposing Mount Rainier to the south-east, opposite the distant Puget Sound to the north, while the vista of Elliott Bay and its islands, and beyond them the Olympic mountains to the west, were mirrored by Lake Washington and Mount Baker and the the heavily forested Cascade Mountains to the east. Cam had never been one for very fine dining and even now he wore only jeans and a button down shirt, but he knew how to entertain her, she laughed and grinned and talked and even on one occasion sang when he pressed her for some lyrics she had stuck in her head. She never could refuse him when he smiled at her that way. With lunch winding down, and their view once more facing the Olympic Mountains, she was surprised by the waiter laying before her a silver tray with a very tall sundae glass filled with blue jello, which she grinned at and forgot completely a moment later when she spotted what sat before it at it's foot: a small, navy-blue velvet box with a fine silver clasp. Blinking at it in surprise, she hesitantly reached for it, her fingers shaking slightly as they touched the top. She looked up at Cam and her breath hitched when she saw the look in his eyes as he watched her from across the table. He had that same look, the one she remembered from her dreams of their time on Odyssey. She bit her lip and looked down at the box again, her eyes welling up. Taking it in her hands she lifted the clasp and gently snapped open the box, revealing a golden band inside, nestled in silken folds which set off the arc of small diamonds curving along its top.

"Samantha Carter, would you do me the honour of marrying me?" His voice was barely more than a whisper, but the emotion laden tone behind it made her look into his eyes again. The tears rolled down her cheeks as she could only nod several times before finally breathing out a reply.

"Yes, I would, Cameron Mitchell." As she spoke his smile brightened and widened and suddenly they were both surrounded by cheering waiters and waitresses and clapping patrons as bottles of champagne were opened and flutes filled with them handed around to everyone in sight. She stood in her seat and kissed him when he did the same, and again when he took the ring and slipped it on her finger. She covered her mouth with her hands as people she'd never met came up to her and embraced her, congratulating them both and toasting to their happiness.

She made sure to eat her jello before they left.

* * *

Archive Storage Facility, Luna, August 2010

Sam turned around at hearing her name called and spotted Cam walking towards her holding a tablet. He wasn't wearing his helmet. She lifted her forearm and fiddled with the controls there and checked that indeed the external readings were nominal, as if the sight of Cam breathing wasn't enough of a clue. She undid the latch under her chin and lifted the face shield up over her head until it nestled at the back, the rest of the helmet's exterior plating sliding into the back and shoulderguards of her integrity suit, leaving only the collar with all its communications and breathing equipment wrapped around her neck under her chin and going over one of her ears.

"Is that a map to the junction?" she asked him as he held the tablet up and nodded in answer. Pressing a few buttons a small rotating wire frame model of the facility appeared on the display, showing a path around the back of the room they were in through some access tunnels. "Not far huh. Is life support in those sections nominal?"

"Everywhere except the hangar." he replied and led the way deeper into the room. "Let's check out the damage and I'll come back and get anything you might need." She followed along behind. The access tunnels were narrow, but they fit through comfortably enough before coming around a corner into a small room with a tower of silvery metal hoops encasing a bright, shining central pillar which darkened and went dead not far from the bottom. Cam stopped in front of it and handed her the tablet which she scanned. Quickly finding something that looked promising she pressed several buttons on the face of the device and the bottom half of the metal rings slid down into a cavity which opened in the floor, revealing the shining tower which ended right above a smooth, wedge shaped cut. Both of them stared at it in alarm and looked at each other. "Sam, that looks deliberate."

"You bet your ass it does." Sam replied and pressed the comm stud at her ear. "~Selenis, this is Carter, we're looking at what looks like deliberate sabotage here.~" She waited several seconds before the comm came back.

"~Say again, Sam. Deliberate sabotage?~" Daniel's dumbfounded voice returned over the radio.

"Roger that, Jackson. ~Someone took a laser cutter to this trunk line. No mistaking that.~" Cam answered as he stepped up and ran his fingers over the smooth, glass-like surfaces of the trunk line's cross-section. He looked at Sam and he flicked his chin to indicate she should look for the cutter.

"~That doesn't make any sense, Cameron. Why would the builders do that?~" asked Vala. Sam looked around the room for any other clues, but came up empty. She checked the tablet and with its help found a storage cabinet inset into the wall which contained various tools, including a laser cutter, neatly stored in its proper place. Deliberate was right.

"~What can I tell you, Vala?~" Cam came to stand beside her as she looked at him with growing disquiet in her eyes. "~Unless they were very polite bad guys who didn't like leaving a mess, this was done by the Alterans themselves. We just found the cutter all tidily stored away.~"

"Perhaps you will find some indication as to what happened in the facility's logs, Colonel Mitchell." Teal'c offered and Sam nodded to Cam who was already moving back towards the access tunnels and the control room before freezing at the threshold. He turned with a look of puzzlement on his face.

"T-man, ~have you been holding out on us?~" he asked slowly in Alteran and Sam's eyes widened in realisation.

"Indeed, Colonel Mitchell. I understand spoken Ancient perfectly well, I also had a lot of time to fill on Odyssey." At the clear amusement in Teal'c's voice Cam gritted his teeth and chuckled in wry amusement. "However, my accent is terrible."

"You sly dog." Cam was grinning. "Here I was thinking we were making you feel left out." He waved at Sam and she took the hint and followed him, they should check the logs together.

"I believe it will be Selenis that will be 'feeling left out' right now, Colonel Mitchell." Teal'c spoke over the radio and Sam chuckled.

"~We're going to check the logs now, guys. We'll play them over the comm if there's audio.~" she said and followed Cam back through the tunnels and up the stairs in the crystal spire room and into the control room, where they searched through the consoles looking for a log of some kind. "Cam, this is crazy. Why would the Alterans sabotage their own base?" She paged through several menus on the console before determining there was nothing resembling a log in it and moved on to the next.

"Sam, your guess is as good as mine. It could be anything. We know they left Earth in Atlantis around the same time. Maybe they didn't want to leave the place in a usable state. Although it's pretty damn usable right now as it is." His own searching seemed to be coming up empty as well. She had a flash and ran into the living quarters next to the control room and began searching. She found several tablets lying on the desk and gathered them up, inclining her head at Cam's curious look from the door until he came and followed suit. They carried them in to the control room and began feeding each into the main console. They did indeed seem to contain duty logs and the like, which were uploaded automatically into the computer. After searching through them they found the last chronological entry and played it. Sam flicked her comm on for the benefit of those at the base.

"~Final log, Selenis Archive. We were right. The Indesta tried to sabotage Selenis too. Like they did to Muranis and Kariala.~" The image was that of a fit-looking middle aged man, hair swept back along his skull, fine features looking tired and worn. He unconsciously fiddled with the collar of his grey worksuit as his eyes flitted back and forth across the consoles before him as he spoke. "~They sabotaged almost everything we tried to leave behind. Practically nothing will survive for the next evolution.~" He passed a hand over his eyes and when he pulled it back he looked haggard and broken. "~What sort of legacy can we bequeath our descendents when our own brothers and sisters wish to end everything.~" Cam looked at her in confusion and she shared it. "~They're gone now, but their work is complete. Selenis will no longer be operational in time. There is no point in using her as our home. Atlantus will do just as well for the few of us that are left.~" The man gave a mirthless chuckle. "~We'll arrive in Sele-...~" he paused a moment and covered his eyes with a hand before proceeding, "~Lantica long before they arrive in Thyilea. May they rot on their long journey. We'll supervise the seeding there personally, before focusing our efforts higher.~" The man gave a long shuddering sigh before looking straight ahead into the pick up. "~If anyone is reviewing this then do not reconnect the archive to Selenis. The Indesta introduced an intelligent polymorphic worm into one of the upgraded data core crystals. Once we realised what was happening, we began keeping logs on these tablets and initiated eradication protocols, but it will take the attack programs decades to destroy all instances of the worm and reconstruct the archive data. We were forced to physically sever the connection to Selenis as software blocks and firewalls would not contain it. We are leaving now, Selenis deserves better than this, but it is more than Muranis and Kariala received. Ilemus signing off.~" The log cut off and Sam stared at the screen for several moments.

"~Selenis, did any of that make sense to you? Did you recognise anything this Ilemus mentioned?~" Cam asked, whether he meant to ask the base or their teammates, it was the crisp feminine tones of the Alteran facility which responded.

"~ Ilemus was my Lead Designer and the Head Engineer of my construction project. I do not recognise any other references in the entry. I surmise this is information which may be available in the archive repository.~" Cam frowned and passed a hand over his eyes at the news. Sam rubbed his shoulder and he smiled wistfully at her.

"~'Lantica' would be the Alteran name for the Pegasus galaxy, probably named because they were going to use Atlantus to get there. I'll guess 'Thyilea' is the name of another galaxy?~" Daniel added.

"~Could be any of the galaxies in the Local Group. Andromeda or Triangulum maybe?~" Sam offered. "~Maybe even the Pegasus Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy? Lantica would be the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular.~" Cam crossed his arms against his chest as he leant on the console.

"~Muranis and Kariala, the way he spoke about them makes it sound like they were bases like Selenis.~" Vala added her own theory which sounded perfectly valid to Sam.

"~The other two addresses with eight symbol matches to Selenis?~" she offered and Cam nodded that it was a possibility.

"~Perhaps we could check somehow, later. Though it would depend on what the sabotage would have done to them.~" Cam scratched at his chin. "~What about these 'Indesta', any thoughts guys?~"

"They sound like separatists or dissidents, Colonel Mitchell. A group opposed to leaving any Ancient technology behind intact." Teal'c posited and Sam saw Cam nodding as he chewed his lip.

"~That sounds about right T, separatists who moved to another galaxy when the Ancients went to Pegasus. What did Ilemus mean by them arriving in Lantica long before the Indesta would arrive in Thyilea?~" He turned to Sam who nodded and added her theory.

"~If the Indesta left this galaxy in one of these moon ships the journey would be made entirely at sublight. They couldn't possibly open a hyperspace window large enough for a moon.~" Cam gently placed his hand over Sam's mouth and she looked at him questioningly.

"~Never say never, Sam.~" he said softly and she smiled, acquiescing. "~Still, Selenis doesn't have hyperspace engines, so the Indesta's moon ship probably doesn't, the idea they're moving at sublight must put a low end to their journey time, am I right?~"

"~There are fifty galaxies within four and a half million lightyears of us. Over eighty within ten million. If they picked one in the Milky Way's satellite galaxy system it could be at least anything from twenty-five thousand years to nine hundred thousand. Three million if they picked one of Andromeda's satellites or Triangulum. These are all fastest possible travel times at sublight. They'd have to move ballistically for most of the journey or they'd run out of power driving the gravitic displacement engine for millions of years, they'd need thousands of Potentia to make that happen.~" Sam leant on the console next to Cam and laid her head on his shoulder. "~If we're lucky they may not even have arrived, which would make them someone else's problem.~"

"~Why would they be our problem in the first place? Sounds like they're long gone.~" Vala countered.

"~Because if they ever found out we've been making use of Ancient technology, which they explicitly wanted to deny to us, they might make an issue of it. And remember, the Lanteans came back. So might these Indesta or their decendents.~" Daniel supplied.

"~These numbers are too big and too... vague to do anything with right now. Unless we can get at what's in the archive we're just speculating.~" Cam groused and Sam took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

"~Colonel Mitchell, it is too dangerous for me to reconnect to the archive while there is still a chance the worm is extant.~" Selenis' comment made Cam sigh and close his eyes. "~However, I am able to produce a scanning program which will heuristically search the core data crystals for any sign of the worm. It will determine whether the eradication protocols were ultimately successful as they should have been.~" Cam brightened instantly.

"~That is good news, Selenis. When can you get that ready?~" He looked over at Sam and smiled. However what Selenis said next caused the smile to drop away as if it had never been there.

"~It is ready now, Colonel Mitchell, I have transmitted the program to your 'jumper', there will be a tablet ready for you. However, it will take approximately 315.523 Terran days to complete the scan once execution commences.~" Only a computer could deliver such devastating news so dispassionately.

"~Ten months!~ What the Hell?" He stood up and Sam had to straighten herself at his movement. He turned around and put a hand on her shoulder in apology and she brushed her hand over it in acceptance.

"~It is a very large repository, Colonel Mitchell.~" came the ready reply.

"She's got a point, Cam." Sam smiled softly as he glared at her.

"Don't you start with the genderising too!" he snapped and Vala laughed triumphantly in the background. "What are we going to do for ten months?" Sam smiled slyly and flicked off both their radios very deliberately before leaning close and whispering softly into his ear.

"I can think of a thing or two."


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 4**

Stargate Command, April 2006

Cam's fingers hovered over the side of his neck and he gulped painfully while rounding the corner and closing in on Sam's lab. He walked in and was surprised to find it empty. Frowning and putting his hands on his hips he glared at the empty room as if by sheer force of will he could make Sam appear.

"Hey Cam, I was about to call you." came her bright, melodious voice from behind him and he nearly jumped. He turned to see Sam chuckling and edging around him carrying two plates heaped with food. He stared at them in open amazement. She'd not only managed to find roast beef, but she'd gotten hash browns too. The woman was a goddess. He licked his lips and moved aside to let her pass without taking his eyes from her burden.

"Sam... I don't know how you did it, but you read my mind. _And_ you got them to make roast beef! _And_ hash browns! Breakfast and lunch for dinner!" He cried in triumph, following behind her to her lab bench and helping to clear enough space for them to eat. "You have no idea how starved I am, Doc Lam wouldn't clear me out of the infirmary in time! She did it on purpose!" Sam grinned and laughed at him.

"Let that serve as a lesson to you about going off-world half-cocked." She smiled as he grumbled throatily at her then gave a slight cough. She winced at that and raised her fingers to his neck, letting them brush over the darkening ligature marks left by Volnek as he fought with Cam. She breathed in softly as her fingers moved over his skin, her eyes locked on the bruises, until he turned to look at her with a small smile.

"I'll be okay, Sam. Doc says I should be careful when I eat, but that's all." He took her hand and pulled her to sit down next to him. "Now tell me how come the kitchen staff will make you roast beef on a whim, but they wait until I'm out of phase before making it at my request?" She laughed and began tucking into her hash browns.

"What can I say, Cameron? They like me." She grinned and he just scoffed.

* * *

The Pentagon, Washington D.C., July 2010

They walked into the briefing room at Homeworld Command, having taken a short trip from Lunar orbit aboard Odyssey, to find General O'Neill, Major Paul Davis and a technician who was currently hosting the consciousness of Colonel Everett Young. Cam and Sam came to attention until O'Neill waved them off and everyone sat down around the table.

"Thanks for coming, guys." Jack began breezily. "It's good you called when you did or we might have been forced to beam you out with no warning." He introduced the man next to him. "Some of you know Tech Sergeant Wilson. This of course isn't he. This is Colonel Young inside the Tech Sergeant." He turned to Sam. "Did I mention I find these stones to be kinda creepy?" She smiled and Daniel lay his head in his hands.

"You seemed to find them relaxing when you were seeing parts of Joe Spencer's life, sir." Sam replied, to which he blinked.

"Yeah, but we weren't swapping bodies. I blame Daniel for that." He glanced at the archaeologist who looked at Vala while holding his hand out to indicate Jack.

"See? Told you we'd always get the blame." he said and she quirked an eyebrow.

"I didn't hear my name mentioned at all." She smiled and Daniel glared at her. Jack cleared his throat and both returned their attentions to him.

"As I was saying, I blame Daniel for that." Jack's smirk was very noticeable and Daniel just glared at him. "All that aside, Colonel Young is here for a reason and I'll leave it to him to explain it." He leaned back in his chair and motioned for Young to continue.

"Earlier this week, Dr. Rush approached me with a story of a Lucian Alliance spy within the SGC." He had everyone's attention with that. "He claimed to come by this information in a dream, flashbacks which passed through his mind, of this spy meeting with Lucian Alliance operatives on _Earth_." Cam had frowned at the mention of dreams and flashbacks, but he certainly wasn't in a position to gainsay such things, as he was still recovering memories from two timelines which no longer existed. "I don't exactly trust Dr. Rush," everyone heard Jack snort before Young continued, "but something he told me gave me pause, he mentioned that the person whose reflection he saw in the flashback was someone who he had switched consciousnesses with via the stones before. Lieutenant Scott had come to me several months ago with a similar story of flashbacks, about the same person." Cam turned to Sam and she glanced over at him at the same time.

"Some sort of bleed over? Interference caused by something deeper in the psyche?" asked Sam of no one in particular. Young still answered her question.

"We don't know. Dr. Rush suspects the possibility of Goa'uld brainwashing." He looked on impassively as Sam's eyes widened slightly. "Dr. Rush then laid out a plan to attempt to prove his claims, by taking over the body of this person and attempting to find clues, ideally leading to an attempt at contact with this person's handlers."

"Whoa, whoa! Dr. Rush is gonna play spy?" Cam cried in disbelief. "You can't possibly think that's a good idea!"

"No, I don't, but it _is_ the best we could come up with." Young replied. "He was the one who had the visions, he has the clues."

"But you said you don't trust Rush." Daniel added and Young nodded.

"That's right, which is why this plan also serves a secondary purpose. To possibly give Rush enough rope to hang himself with." Young looked between the several SG-1 members seated at the table, who were looking back in various states of disbelief. "We need one of you to follow Dr. Rush after he slips his Air Force handler, the rest will monitor from orbit and prepare for capture of the Lucian Alliance members if possible, or an extraction of Dr. Rush if necessary."

"You have not identified the alleged spy as of yet, Colonel Young." Teal'c pointed out, breaking his silence.

"That's right, Dr. Rush has swapped bodies with Colonel David Telford." he stated softly, leaving them all stunned. Sam blinked several times, looking down at the table trying to get her thoughts in order. Telford knew everything about Destiny. He knew about Praxyon. He'd been there! She looked up sharply at O'Neill.

"General! Colonel Telford knows-" She was cut off by Jack's raised hand.

"Taken care of, Carter. Daedalus and Odyssey are both setting off for Praxyon right now. Though if the Alliance hasn't hit it yet they're not likely to. The planetary surface is a molten hell hole. The base is two miles underground with only ring and 'gate access to the facility, which we've fortified to an insane degree." He shrugged and looked at Cam expectantly.

"They'd have to be crazy to try, sir." Cam dutifully supplied. Sam sighed and turned back to Jack.

"You've never been the sort to rely on an opponent not being crazy, sir." She tilted her head.

"You're right. Which is why I know they won't hit it." He smiled smugly and she shook her head a little, frowning. "The crazier thing to do would be to hit your new Moon base." Sam was horrified.

"Sir, the Alliance couldn't possibly be _that_ crazy! To attack a static position in their enemy's home system is suicide!" She looked over at Cam for support. He was already turning to address O'Neill.

"General, Selenis isn't defenseless." He leaned forward with his forearms laid flat on the table. "We've checked out several systems. There are shields and several drone launchers. Once life support is restored to the rest of the base and we find the chair room, the base can't be touched by anything the Alliance can bring to bear. Once we find the long range sensors, which are bound to be there, we'll be able to see them coming from several thousand lightyears away."

"They don't know that, you've only found that out in the last two hours." O'Neill pointed out and Cam had to nod in acquiescence. "Anyway, I doubt they'll hit either. Not anytime soon." He stood up and the three Air Force colonels around the table stood with him. "Danny, you're the tail, you'll have several tactical squads at your beck and call if you need it. The rest of you are to take over the Hammond, get ready to pull them up off the ground as soon as he yells." He turned and walked out, Young left with him, no doubt so he could return to Destiny. Vala turned to Daniel and she grinned broadly.

"Want me to come keep you company, Daniel?" She grabbed hold of his arm and he had to gently pry her fingers from him while shaking his head.

"I'll need to stay focused, Vala, stakeouts may be boring, but distraction is even worse." He sighed at the angry pout on her face. "Besides, you need to stay up here and help the guys." He turned to Cam and raised his eyebrows. "In fact you should take this opportunity to use the Galaran memory device. Test out the Alteran course while you wait for my signal." Sam crossed her arms across her chest and realised that was a good idea. She turned to Vala and nodded towards her.

"We should both do it, Vala." She waited for a reply, but Vala simply shrugged her shoulders apathetically, still upset she couldn't go with Daniel. Sam turned to Teal'c and sighed apologetically. "Sorry, Teal'c, but it's not rated for use by Jaffa."

"I understand, Colonel Carter." He nodded slowly with a slight smile. Cam turned to Major Davis.

"Paul, can we contact the SGC and have them prep the things we'll need for some accelerated learning courses?" he asked. Major Davis simply smiled and nodded.

"I'll put in the request right away." He turned to Daniel. "Dr. Jackson, let's get you to mission prep, you'll find a change of clothes there and a vehicle for your part of the mission." Daniel nodded, "Colonel Carter, you've been assigned command of USS George Hammond for this mission," at the quizzical tilt of her head he explained further, "Colonel Brigham was reassigned to take over at the Alpha Site and the Hammond is undergoing a refit to better integrate the new ZPM harnesses in case we find any more of them." Cam and Sam both chuckled at that.

"Oh, we have a surprise for you, Paul." said Cam and the team followed him out.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 212 days relative

Cam held the mistletoe above Sam's head and grinned jovially. It didn't count of course, but if she did go with it he definitely wasn't going to complain. He'd been trying really hard to bottle up what he was feeling and this would be a test of his resolve. She smiled at him and her eyes twinkled and he nearly lost his nerve completely. She could destroy him so easily with those eyes. She looked so beautiful, she'd even worn the small hair clips he'd had made for her as a present nestled above her ear. Vala had been right about what design to use, they looked cute in her short hair. He'd need to think of something to match for her birthday in four days. She leaned up slightly and he moved to close the rest of the gap, chastely pressing his lips to hers and pulling away a little more slowly than was necessary, but still more quickly than he'd like. As he did, he saw the blue in her eyes deepening and how she bit her lip while smiling, until she turned to laugh at something General Landry said. He really wasn't paying attention anymore. It was just a tiny kiss, there was no passion in it, but it had sent a shock through him and he realised his resolve was nothing. Not in the face of the certain knowledge he was in love with Samantha Carter and trapped on a boat with her for who knows how long. And all the while she was... out of reach.

He plastered a smile on his face and turned to Vala. He needed to camouflage things. Twirling the mistletoe above the raven-haired alien he grinned and leaned down. She grinned back and kissed him lightly on the lips, patting his arm as he pulled away. The look she gave him was slightly sad though, and he saw her eyes flicking over to Sam. He shook his head at her and saw her sigh. He didn't know how, but Vala knew. Vala had always known. She'd poked and prodded him from time to time until he made it clear to her what the frat regs were, at which point she'd scoffed and poked and prodded more. For a while anyway. Until he'd gone to his reunion. She'd not been overt about it, but he could sense she had been disappointed in him. This from a woman who was legally married to a Commander in the Ori armies and was shacking up with the man she really loved aboard a Tau'ri ship. Still she had never pretended to be a good girl. He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment with a tiny nod and she smiled sadly at him again. Time for more camouflage.

He stood up and got Daniel's attention, giving him an evil grin and holding up the mistletoe. The reaction was immediate. Daniel glared at him and pointed at him to stay away, brandishing his fork defensively. Everyone around the table laughed out loud, except Teal'c, whose smirk was very broad.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 216 days relative

Sam opened the door to her quarters to find Cam standing outside in his running outfit. It was barely 0600 hours and she blinked wearily at him, wondering what he was doing there. He seemed a bit flustered and fumbled at the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, producing a small box from its folds. He held it up and offered it to her.

"Happy birthday, Sam." His voice was soft, his drawl slightly more pronounced, early morning perhaps, or her own semi-awake state, the fact she couldn't take her eyes off his lips just then didn't help matters at all. She was remembering that kiss at the Christmas party. She'd been remembering it every day since, and dreaming about it every night. There was something about it that she couldn't put her finger on. Something which made her lean forward towards him, still staring at those lips. Why had he come here on her birthday? Her birthday! She gasped and her eyes widened, released from the spell which locked them onto his lips she glanced down at the long, thin box he held up.

"Thank you, Cameron!" She smiled and took the box from him, lifting the lid with a gentle snap, she looked inside to find a small bracelet with similar motifs to the hair clips he'd given her for Christmas. Her smile widened as she ran a finger over the ornamented silver chain then looked up at Cam's sheepish smile. "It's lovely. Help me?" She held the box out to him and he took the bracelet from it. She held her wrist out, palm up, and he encircled it with the bracelet, doing up the little clasp. When he finished, his fingers brushed along the smooth skin of her inside arm and she nearly shivered. As it was her breath hitched and she frowned slightly when he pulled his hand away.

"I wanted to say sorry too. I've not been the most pleasant person to be around the last six months, I know. I've said some things to you which..." He looked down for a moment before meeting her eyes again. "Well, I wish I'd never said them, I can't stand that I did, that I hurt you by saying them. I'm sorry, Sam." His voice was laden with emotion, thickening and breaking at the end. Sam reached across to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, embracing him.

"It's okay, Cam. I understand how you've been feeling, I really do. I knew you regretted it the moment you said it, I could see it. It's okay." she said gently into his ear, trying to soothe his tattered emotions. His hands had slipped around her waist as she'd spoken and he held her tightly for several moments after she finished. She was surprised at how good it felt to be held by him. How well she fit against him. "I'll never forgive you for waking me up this early though. I only went to bed two hours ago." He pulled away, looking horrified and apologetic. She laughed and hugged him again, tighter.

* * *

Selenis, Luna, August 2010

It had been a week since Sam had returned from the Archive Storage facility after activating the advanced scanning program created by Selenis. Essentially they were on facility and systems exploration duty for a while. They had found the chair room at the base of the facility, below the 'gate room, but there was no control interface crystal for it. Selenis mused that it was probably one of the last systems to be brought online, and likely had not been before the connection with the archive was severed. So in order to make up for the facility's sparse database, Sam had arranged for a subspace connection to Praxyon, and had spent the last few days integrating the Ancient database there into Selenis' own databanks.

"~Hypraxia Korvalis is a fascinating facility, Dr. Carter.~" Sam smiled and nodded, she had just finished explaining some of the many uses to which they were now putting the Ancient outpost. "~To think you have used it to direct wormholes through time is frankly astonishing.~" Sam wondered just how sophisticated the personality engrams used by the computer were.

"~It is Selenis, but unless we can find a way to channel more of its power to the Stargate we can't use it to connect with Destiny.~" She paused and looked up slightly, something they all seemed to do unconsciously when addressing the base's computer directly. "~We were hoping to be able to connect from here, but the power relays and safety interlocks connected to the 'gate here are only rated for intergalactic connections and can't be easily replaced.~"

"~That is correct, though if these schematics of Hypraxia are accurate, manufacturing uprated power relays for use there should be possible, with the right raw materials.~ Selenis' feminine tones were beguiling, Sam was finding it harder to resist joining Vala in genderising the computer's personality.

"~I admit that we were hoping that would be the case.~" She reviewed the schematics Selenis was displaying on the console in front of her. "~Our manufacturing base on Terra is still not quite up to the task. We can manage components to handle the capacity, just not the fine control elements they would require.~ She sighed and pulled her glasses from her face, rubbing the skin between her brows.

"~It is getting late, Dr. Carter, and I believe Colonel Mitchell will come and fetch you in a further 6.73 minutes, based on past performance, he is already at the foot of the stairs.~ Sam chuckled, it seemed the base and Cam were officially in cahoots to make sure she got tucked in at night.

"~Yes, though I should point out we have an adage on Terra, Selenis, 'past performance is not indicative of future results.'~ She replaced her glasses and stood up from the console.

"~Colonel Mitchell tells me to 'expect the unexpected.' A phrase I find baffling.~" Selenis' tone had Sam laughing, the computer actually sounded confused.

"~Colonel Mitchell is wiser than he looks, Selenis. We'll pick up this integration work in the morning.~" She moved away from the console at Selenis' acknowledgement. It was late in their workday and Selenis was already dimming internal lights in the facility, as they requested for it to do when they set up the mission at the base. They all felt they should follow Atlantis' example of making distinctions between day and night, especially since they were underground. Hypraxia had been an eye opener for them as a twenty-four hour base, it was hard to keep to sensible schedules. Things would be different here. Sam walked down the stairs from the command balcony to the left of the Stargate and stood next to Cameron as he looked out over the hangar bay from between the two sets of stairs. He looked over to her and smiled gently, slipping an arm around her waist he pulling her close so she stood in front of him facing the hangar and he encircled her from behind with his arms.

"It's not quite the same as a starry sky is it? Though looking at that Supergate is a little breathtaking at times." His soft voice made her smile as she pressed her temple against his cheek and closed her eyes. It felt so good not having to hide anything anymore. They were together, everybody knew, nobody cared. At least not as far as they were aware. If someone outside the SGC was raising objections they weren't reaching them. She was grateful to Jack and General Landry for that. She lay her hands across his over her stomach and caressed the backs of them. "Everything in this place is breathtaking. I don't know what to look at half the time."

"Why only half the time?" She turned her head to look into his face over her shoulder. She had an idea what he would say, and an idea he knew that she knew, if the smile on his lips was anything to go by.

"Because the other half of the time I'm looking at you of course." He didn't disappoint, she nuzzled his cheek with a smile. "I _have_ been looking over at that half-built ship down there." He nodded down into the hangar and she looked down to the ship sitting in its cradle. She frowned slightly, something was amiss. "Does it look less incomplete than when we arrived to you too?" He was right, it did.

"~Selenis, these Alteran ships in the hangar- ~" Sam began.

"~Galadia and Palladus.~" Selenis supplied.

"~Yes, thank you. What is their history?~" she asked.

"~They are the first two vessels of my defense fleet. Galadia's construction was completed approximately one hundred and twenty Terran days before Ilemus directed me to enter minimal power mode, at which time Palladus' construction was paused.~" The implications of what the base told them registered with both of them at once.

"~Paused, but not halted. You've resumed construction?~" asked Cam, one of his hands coming up to touch the transparent wall ahead of them.

"~Correct. Palladus' construction will be complete in 78.65 Terran days. At which point I will begin construction of their sister ship, Kastia.~" Sam's breath stuck in her throat as she leaned in closer to the view, looking down at the vessel which was slowly taking a more complete shape.

"~Um, how many ships are you scheduled to build, Selenis?~" she asked in a soft voice.

"~My construction schedule at present, based on available raw materials, is for ten vessels.~" Sam closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the wall, Cam placed his hand on her shoulder as he looked past her down to the hangar, she reached up to clutch at it. She'd looked at the specs for those ships, they were state of the art at the time for the Alterans, comparable to, or better than, the vessels the Lanteans used in the Pegasus galaxy.

"~So approximately two hundred and forty days, per ship, to build?~" she asked in amazement. Each ship was nearly two thousand metres long and five hundred meters wide at the aft engine cowlings. They were almost twice as long as the Ori motherships.

"~Correct, Dr. Carter.~" replied the AI impassively. "~Although I could employ more berths, to build multiple ships simultaneously, if you require it. There is a commensurate loss of efficiency, however.~" Sam laughed nervously and clapped a hand over her mouth. She'd sounded like Vala just then.

"~Uh, no, Selenis. Just carry on as you are for now. We'll get back to you closer to when Palladus is completed.~" Cam instructed and the computer burbled a response in acquiescence. He placed both hands on Sam's shoulders and moved them down her arms until she leaned back against his chest and stared off into the depths of the hangar, he wrapped his arms across her chest. "How the Hell are we going to explain _that_ to the IOA?"

"I'm not sure I want to." she confessed. The idea of the IOA having control over a fleet of Alteran ships did not sit well with her. Before she could think about it further however the view in front of her was suddenly obscured by an image projected in the clear matrix. She blinked in surprise and stepped back along with Cam to better see what was being shown.

"~You will wish to see this, Dr. Carter, Colonel Mitchell.~" Selenis cut in as a set of targeting boxes flashed on a star map being displayed. "~A group of vessels travelling in hyperspace have entered the extreme range of my sensors. Their projected course will pass within three lightyears of Sol.~" A faint blue line continued past the blips and sidled close to a marked star. "~This is likely not coincidental.~"

"~We're not expecting anyone, are we? Tok'ra or Jaffa?~" asked Cam to Sam's headshake.

"~Not according to the latest communiques from the SGC.~" she replied. "~Do you have an estimated time of arrival, Selenis?~"

"~Eighteen hours seventeen minutes, Dr. Carter.~" the AI replied. Sam grimaced.

"We can recall Odyssey, though I bet General O'Neill will want to keep Daedalus on station at Praxyon for the time being at least." Sam pointed to the star where two of Earth's battlecruisers were currently stationed, Selenis helpfully highlighted it for her. "Even so Odyssey will have to strain its engines to get here in time, since Atlantis is currently using its ZPM to return to Pegasus."

"Let's get Homeworld Command on the blower." Cam said and Sam laughed. "What?"

"You've been remembering too much of your time in the RAF recently." She turned to walk back to command.

"Shut up!" he cried as he followed her.

"~Galadia can be prepared for departure within fifteen hours. Pressurising interior spaces, replenishing plasma capacitors and checking drone inventories can all be completed within such a time.~" Selenis' offered and Cam brightened.

"~Please do, Selenis!~" he cried. "Do you hear that, Sam? Maybe we'll be able to take out the brand-new Alteran ship for a spin." He bounded over to her at the communications console.

"Cam, it's hardly brand-new, it's several million years old." She smiled at his frown.

"So it won't have that new car smell," he muttered, "but it's never left the forecourt!" Sam patted his arm indulgently and took her glasses off as she activated the subspace connection with the Pentagon. They were running Selenis on Mountain Standard Time so they were a couple of hours behind Washington D.C., but Sam wasn't surprised to see Major Paul Davis accept their connection. "Homeworld Command, this is Selenis. Major Davis, we've got some news for General O'Neill, is he still there?"

"We can get his car turned around, Colonel, is it serious?" asked the Major as he signalled to someone off screen and turned back, glancing between Cameron and Sam.

"It is, Paul, we've got contacts on long range sensors, projected course is suspiciously close to us." Sam replied. Davis looked down in thought and nodded. He looked to his left as a Tech Sergeant approached and whispered in his ear.

"We have the General on a secure line, patching it through." Davis nodded at a signal from off screen. "General O'Neill, we have Dr. Carter and Colonel Mitchell online from Selenis."

"Go ahead, Mitchell, Carter." came Jack's voice.

"General, Selenis has picked up several ships on long range sensors on an incoming trajectory to Sol." Cam reiterated for the listening O'Neill. "We should advise the SGC and our ships in-system and also perhaps recall either Odyssey or Daedalus, and contact our allies."

"I thought we had the 'no solicitors' signs posted at the edge of the Oort cloud." O'Neill muttered and Sam blinked in surprise until she remembered Jack was an amateur astronomer.

"Sorry sir, but the DoD refused to fund a sign ten thousand kilometers long." Cam joked.

"Very funny, Mitchell. Seriously though, weren't we looking at a way of relaying Selenis' sensor telemetry down to us?" Jack's question had Sam leaning forward.

"We're working on it, sir. We were going to test the connection in the next couple of days." She glanced at Cam who gave a faint nod. "We can try to expedite that. We have eighteen hours according to Selenis' estimates."

"Sounds like a plan. Anything on the ships themselves?" asked O'Neill over the line while Davis signalled off screen again and whispered into the ear of a technician who ran off quickly.

"~Current range to contacts is too great to discern anything.~" Selenis supplied and Cam relayed the answer.

"Well, I'll get onto the IOA and the President about liaising with the Chinese." O'Neill muttered. "Apollo and Hammond will be put on alert status, Odyssey will be recalled, Davis, get on that." Major Davis rattled off a confirmation. "I'll get Hank to call the Tok'ra and Jaffa, but they may not have anything close enough. Anything else?"

"Selenis is prepping the completed Alteran ship. It will be ready in time also." Cam supplied.

"Well, well. Can we call it Enterprise?" Sam rolled her eyes at O'Neill despite his not being able to see her.

"No, sir, Galadia already has a name." she replied verbally.

"Darn. Well, carry on and keep us informed. Get working on that telemetry connection. Mitchell I assume you'll be piloting... Galadia?" O'Neill asked.

"Yes, sir." he replied.

"Lucky bastard. O'Neill out." Sam smiled and Davis chuckled and signed off himself.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 5**

Skies east of Rouen, France, July 1943

Cam released his bombs and felt the Hawker Typhoon Mk. Ib beneath him judder upwards at the loss. He quickly banked high and right and turned his wing over to come in for a strafing run along a line of Bf109s neatly parked on the grass verge, while his bombs exploded on the runway. German ground crews and rushing pilots alike throwing themselves down to the ground while the odd soldier raised their K98k to fire at his low-flying plane. He felt the concussion from the bombs of his wingmen exploding along the runway as he started his first pass over the airplanes. After riddling the tower alongside the field with cannon fire from his four Hispano Mk. IIs, he banked away northwards and back towards the coast and a return to RAF Duxford with his flight forming up on his wing. In their wake they left an unusable airfield and the burning fuselages of a dozen German fighters.

Radio chatter was always kept to a minimum, his boys were well trained, they knew the mission wasn't over and they were keeping their eyes peeled to the horizon while they flew over the French countryside on their dash for the coast. After being promoted and taking over No. 609 Squadron RAF, with Morley being made Wing Commander and given a whole Group to look after, he made sure to drill his men on effective group tactics which had seen them acquitting themselves very well against German fighter sweeps, even after they'd replaced their Spitfires with Typhoons, which was a better ground attack aircraft than air superiority fighter. He expected concentration, determination and vigilance from his pilots. Vigilance which paid off when the voice of one of his flight cut into his headphones.

"Bandits spotted, three o'clock high!" Cam's head spun to the right and he squinted into the late afternoon sky to spot the flight of Focke-Wulf 190s headed their way.

"Roger that, tally four bandits, three o'clock high. Look alive gents, engage!" He broke to the right, tipping his wing over, knowing his wingman would follow and cover him. The 190s were closing fast and it wasn't long before Cam opened up with his cannons at about two hundred meters and broke left after flying through the German formation. He was always confident of his accuracy at range compared to most pilots and was rewarded with one of the 190s flaming out and spiralling away and down, while the Germans' own fire missed the mark. He pulled back sharply on his yoke, pulling the Typhoon into as tight a turn as he could manage and rolled out wide to find a 190 on the tail of one of his flight. Turning in he opened up with his cannons again as he flew past and above the German plane. Finding his mark along the wing, he saw it explode, sending the plane into a spin. He craned his neck, looking behind him to spot the last two FW-190s engaging another of his flight and banked in to support. The man he'd just aided formed up on his wing and they saw their third comrade making a run against the Germans as well. The Typhoon being harried pulled down into a diving turn to try and take advantage of the 190s complicated flight-trim system which sometimes left them at a disadvantage during dogfights.

The 190s' pilots were smarter than that and after a quick burst of fire from their own machine guns and cannons they disengaged when they spotted the other three planes flying in. Cam's next attack run was unsuccessful and in fact left him with both 190s on his six where they quickly took advantage. Cam rolled and dove while his wingmen eventually chewed up the 190s, only for the last German to score several machine gun hits along Cam's Typhoon, a few 13mm rounds passing straight through the cockpit and slamming into his control board, others flying through his canopy and one which missed his leg by only inches, but which sent shrapnel driving into his thigh. He gritted his teeth, as the deep cut quickly stained the leg of his flight suit with blood, and ordered his flight back to base. He flew one handed across the channel while his left hand clutched at the top of his thigh in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. It was a long flight to Cambridgeshire and by the time he landed at the airfield he'd lost far too much blood, his vision was cloudy and his movements sluggish. Before his head lolled against the canopy, he just managed to get a wheel on the ground, which forced his eyes open again and he wrestled the plane level so he wouldn't dig his wing into the ground and flip the aircraft over. He hit the brakes and cut power and finally sagged into his seat.

"Squadron Leader Carter!" The voice startled him and his eyes flew open. In a daze he turned his head to see the canopy sliding open and hands fumbling with harnesses and restraints and grabbing him by the armpits and dragging him out.

"What is it, Hodgkins?" he asked of his wingman in a weak voice. He received no reply, or if he did, he couldn't hear it. He just looked into the wide eyes of the young pilot above him, whose mouth was definitely moving now that he watched a bit more closely. He was far too tired to try to make out what he was saying though, choosing instead to succumb to slumber. Blinking blearily his head sagged to the side, his vision swimming in and out of focus. Before his eyes closed he could swear he saw Sam smile and shake her head.

* * *

Seattle-Tacoma Airport, Washington, February 12th, 2009 (alternate timeline)

Sam sat at a little table behind the large Starbucks booth in the Central Terminal of the airport. She faced the tall, curved windows overlooking the runways and warmed her hands on her mug of hot chocolate. She wanted to relax today, because Saturday was her wedding day. A smile broke out over her lips when the thought passed through her mind as it had countless times over the last several weeks since Cam proposed to her. She gave a contented sigh and took another sip from her marshmallow topped mug. He was also coming to Seattle to pick her up. They weren't worried. Her handler believed her to be already en route to California for an installation, and her laptop showed no activity from them at all. All she had to do was wait for her beloved and spend a few hours with him until their connecting flight to Los Angeles. Things couldn't get better than this.

"Samantha! What a lovely surprise!" The voice of her neighbour Andre made her cringe. What were the chances he'd pass by here, right at this moment? Things couldn't get worse than this. She plastered a smile on her face and looked up at the tall, nordic-looking blond as he laid his coat over the top of his rolling suitcase and bent down over her for his habitual greeting of a kiss on the cheek. If he wasn't French by dint of parentage Sam wouldn't let him get away with it.

"Andre, it's... a surprise all right. I had no idea you'd be here today." Her fake smile faltered as she saw him unbutton his suit and sit down opposite her at her table. "Just flying in from somewhere?" The man smiled, creasing his finely chiselled features in ways calculated to make most women swoon. Sam had seen better.

"Yes, I just came back from Chicago. A very important client whose network suffered a targeted attack." He leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. "Very hush-hush, okay?" Sam quirked an eyebrow, but relented and made a small twisting motion of her thumb and forefinger over her lips. As if the secrets she already knew wouldn't stop his heart if she spoke them. "Someone, we believe a competitor, attempted to break through the encryption firewalls I set up around their intranet and their new product designs. They failed of course. I flew in to check how far they got and to see if there was any need to tighten the security." He smiled, believing his story was impressive and Sam just nodded. He looked around the terminal for a moment before turning back to her. "What brings you to Sea-Tac today?"

"My fiancé is coming to meet me, we're going on a romantic getaway." She smiled genuinely at that and a petty little corner of her heart revelled at the tiny flash of jealousy which passed across the blond man's face. "I can't wait to see him again, it's been weeks."

"Ah, your boyfriend who lives in Texas." He gave a twisted, sardonic smirk which he quickly schooled into something more charming. "What did you say he did? A car mechanic?" Ah, the pettiness.

"He restores vintage cars." She reached for her laptop and opened it, several clicks and touchpad motions later she had a small slideshow of Cam's completed projects fading in and out on her screen, which she turned to face Andre. "He sticks to sixties and seventies muscle cars, but he loves the work." She saw he was impressed with the cars, even if he didn't want to be. "He also finds particular vehicles for interested buyers for a commission. He managed to find a pristine Aston Martin DB5, in Idaho of all places, for a customer in Miami." Sam smiled slyly. "Of course he was forced to drive it all the way down to Florida himself. It's _hard_ work." She couldn't stifle the grin.

"Damn straight it is! I nearly didn't hand over the keys to that Aston." That drawl made her eyes sparkle and she whipped her head around to face the source, seeing his eyes sparkling to match hers only filled her with happiness, Cam lay his back pack by her chair. "Hey sweetness." He leaned down and gave her a long lingering kiss which left her knees weak, she was glad she hadn't tried to stand up when she saw him. As he pulled away she couldn't help but steal several more quick pecks on his lips, which left him hovering over her with an amused smile.

"Hey to you too, fly boy." She smiled and let her fingers caress his cheek until he pulled back to turn towards her 'guest' across the table. "Cam, this is my neighbour, Andre, he just happened to be passing by after flying in from Chicago. Andre, this is my fiancé, Cameron." Andre stood up, he towered over Cam who, although six feet tall himself, had a slender, toned frame in comparison to the other's gym-styled physique. Sam shook her head imperceptibly as Cam gave her a small questioning look. Andre liked to think of himself as being an excellent physical specimen, he took great pride in his body. He certainly worked hard at making it look as good as it did. That was the problem though, his muscles were for show. On the other hand, Cam's muscles were built for strength, speed and endurance. Andre held his hand out and Cam shook it before frowning slightly and looking down at the other man's grip, quirking an eyebrow. Sam sighed, realising what was happening.

"Quite a grip you got there, Andre." Cam smirked and looked back into the other man's eyes. "Reminds me of high school." He let go and motioned for Andre to sit again before taking the seat next to Sam and intertwining his fingers with hers on the arm of her chair. "This is the neighbour you told me about? The guy with the IT consultancy?" He raised an eyebrow at her and she nodded.

"Andre is a network security expert. He has a lot of corporate clients all over the States." She had to give the man his due, he was good at his job. Cam nodded and smiled at the other man.

"Sounds interesting. I admit I've been all fingers and thumbs with computers most of my life, Sam's been teaching me a lot though." His words made her remember that one time he'd been forced to get very familiar with one of her computers very quickly, he managed to activate Merlin's phasing device just in time.

"How did you two meet? I wouldn't have thought you would have much in common." Andre was being extra smarmy. Sam looked at Cam and shared his amused look. They couldn't tell him they'd known each other for twenty years since going to the Air Force Academy together, or mention all the other things they had 'in common' with each other.

"Government contract project. We were both hired in and met on site. What can I say, I was smitten as soon as I laid eyes on her." His goofy grin made her smile.

"A Government project which required home theatre installation and car restoration?" Andre looked somewhat incredulous.

"We were in different fields back then." Sam replied with the only explanation she would offer him, though it might have surprised him what the US Marshals sometimes needed to arrange. He looked unsatisfied.

"It must be hard to keep up a long distance relationship like this." He didn't phrase it as a question.

"It's out of our hands right now. We just make sure to make time for each other as often as possible." Cam's hard look at Andre became soft and warm when he turned to face her at the end. She didn't care what others thought about it though. She'd give anything to be with Cam every day, but she would take as much as she could get in the meantime. "Speaking of which," he looked at his watch and Sam picked up on his cue, they had hours still, but she wanted to spend them with just Cam, "we'd better get a move on, Sam." She nodded and finished off her now tepid, but still tasty, hot chocolate and stood up. Andre rose as well and did up the button of his suit, an automatic motion. Cam held out his hand which the other man took. "Pleasure meeting you, Andre." She saw Andre's jaw clench and his eyes widen in alarm and flick down to his hand, she sighed and shook her head slightly.

"Take care, Andre." She gave him a small wave. "Come on, darling, I know how much you love flying Virgin America." She lifted her messenger bag's strap over her head and lay it on her shoulder and slipped her arm through Cam's after he picked up his pack.

"Don't you know it! I'm an ace at Doom." He chuckled and gave Andre a little salute as Sam led him away.

"You didn't break anything did you?" she whispered in his ear as she leaned close to him.

"I felt some bones flexing, but nothing more." He frowned softly. She glanced at him reprovingly, but he rolled his eyes. "I didn't start it. I just ended it."

"I know." She nodded seriously before letting a smile play across her lips. "Is he as bad as your neighbour."

"Honey, I will make sure you never meet Heather. Or there'll be a grave needing to be dug." His voice was serious and Sam wasn't quite sure if his eyes weren't either.

* * *

Selenis, Luna, August 2010

Twelve hours after the unknown ships had been detected on Selenis' radar, Cam and the rest of SG-1 were boarding a jumper in the small hangar behind the 'gateroom. Decked out in their black off-world base uniforms and with several boxes of supplies in the back, they set off for their new battleship. The night before, Cam had only managed to convince Sam to come back to their quarters with him after she had roused all of the base's technical staff to work with the crew at Homeworld Command. She stayed for a couple of hours to make sure they were working well and only then allowed him to lead her away. He had ordered the rest of his team to get rest an hour before, and he was definitely going to need all his stamina to work the control chair on the Alteran ship. Sam had actually managed to sleep for six hours before attempting to sneak away to help with the sensor relays. She'd woken him up, but he let her go with a smile and a kiss and returned to sleep for another hour. He surprised her in command with a large helping of pancakes and a bowl of blue jello when he saw her again. She swooned and hugged him and he chuckled. After receiving word from the Pentagon of separate forces of Jaffa and Tok'ra Ha'taks on their way, which Selenis was monitoring, estimating their arrival to be after that of the unknown vessels, Cam settled for watching Sam work with her teams for another hour, before rounding up the rest of SG-1 and collecting her for their trip to the battleship. They needed to practice on the systems on board before setting off.

Unsealing the iris to the main hangar bay using the neural connection with the jumper, they slipped through the semi-permeable forcefield keeping air in the jumper bay and passed through to the vacuum of the main hangar. He took them all on a quick visual tour of the outside of Galadia, as it perched in its berth. Flying over one of the short wing-like engine cowlings which splayed out from the main hull in a graceful arc, several of the ships main features were helpfully highlighted for them on the jumpers HUD as they flew over, indicating shield generators, drone launchers and plasma weapon mounts, as well as other things such as the position of the bridge at the fore of the ship and the observation deck amidships. Over a mile long, the neck of the battleship tapered off into a sharp downward angled nose, bristling with sensor spines and weapon mounts slung underneath. The bridge itself angled upwards with an arc of viewports curving around the beam of the ship. Flying along its spine they spotted the flight bay doors behind the quarter sphere bubble of the observation deck. Behind the bay began the power distribution and engineering section leading to the main engines, rising higher to the backwards sweeping triangular wedge and the main thruster housing. Galadia was a predator. Coming about he made for the flight bay and ordered it opened, the ship obliged him and he descended inside through its forcefield, finding an open slot at which he landed. They quickly moved their cargo to the nearest transporter and transitioned to the aft of the bridge. Securing their gear they circled around the expansive room, familiarising themselves with all the stations. Cam stood looking out of the viewport at the prow when Sam joined him.

"Are you ready to sit in the big chair?" she asked, rubbing his back. He turned to her and nodded. Vala and Teal'c were already sitting at two forward consoles which they were configuring as weapon stations. Daniel had planted himself along the port side of the bridge at a pair of stations he configured for communications and sensors. Sam walked to the aft wall which held engineering and damage control stations she'd set up a few minutes before. Holographs emblazoned with Alteran text and graphical representations of the ship's subsystems hovered above the stations and Cam walked past them to the centerpiece of the the entire room, the silver seat, inlaid with blue crystal under a latticework of neural interfaces. He stepped up to it and turned, sitting himself down. Immediately it lit up and reclined and he felt the entire ship and all of the hangar in his mind. He closed his eyes and turned his head to the left to see the Supergate as represented through the ships sensors.

'~Welcome aboard, Colonel Mitchell. I am Galadia, I have been expecting you.~' He chuckled, Galadia's 'voice' in his head was deeper, but no less feminine than Selenis'. She actually reminded him of some of the Hak'tyl he'd met. Teal'c would like that.

'~Thank you, Galadia, Selenis has informed you why we are here?~' he asked the ship. His mind suddenly filled with a sea of stars and his view contracted to display the nearby cluster of stellar systems surrounding Sol, nestled among them was a flashing box encasing representational blips.

'~We are to investigate, and if necessary neutralise, a possible incursion by unknown forces with unknown intentions.~' The ship definitely spoke like a soldier. Cam arranged for the ship to aid his teammates in learning the systems while he studied what Selenis had discovered about the ships in the previous half a day. There were eight of them, power levels were comparable to a non-ZPM-powered BC-304, the hyperdrive was much slower than the Asgard designed models sported by the Tau'ri ships, even with the limitations of Tau'ri manufacturing. Not much else was as yet discernible.

When Odyssey returned to Sol it would also be given a new ZPM to match those given to the Hammond and Apollo, Daedalus would receive one the next time it returned home. By special agreement with the Chinese government for their support on the IOA council in keeping Selenis under US control for the foreseeable future, the Sun Tzu had already been given one, while the other three member nations were each getting ZPM-powered BC-304s of their own at a later date, an agreement arranged with the aid of a special envoy from the UK. The Tau'ri ships were mobilising in Earth orbit, though the Sun Tzu was still not committed to take part in any engagement.

Over the next few hours the team, drilled and practiced with the systems. All of them running combat fire simulations with the plasma beam cannons while Sam and Daniel worked the ancillary systems as well. Sam would frequently ring back and forth to Selenis where she was overseeing the sensor relay work until they succeeded in establishing a stable connection with Homeworld Command, which allowed some of the engineers and a couple of squads of Marines to come aboard to act as damage control teams. Cam took frequent breaks from the control chair. Not because of fatigue, but because feeling so much information filling his mind was a little exhilarating. He was having focus problems, and finding it hard not micro-managing several systems. Galadia was helping him become accustomed to the most common roles of Alteran commanders. However, it was soon time to launch.

"~Selenis,~" Cam nearly sniggered at the sound of his thoughts being played over the bridges speakers, diffuse, sibilant, subtly reverberating, he'd probably speak out loud after this, "~we are ready to launch.~" Selenis' crisp tones acknowledged and the hangar bay doors above them began widening to allow them egress. "Jackson, start linking in with the 304s, make sure Odyssey's ZPM is waiting in the ring room for them." Daniel acknowledged his spoken request and bent over the communications console in front of him. His eyes were closed, but he felt her approach, and not through the internal sensors. He reacted to her presence, his nerves tingling. Turning his head he opened his eyes to find her watching him, smiling gently. She leaned down and kissed him softly.

"Time to go, fly boy." she trilled in hushed tones and he smiled.

"Yes, ma'am." He closed his eyes again and engaged the engines, power coursed through his 'limbs', suffused every 'nerve' and 'sense' he had. A thought was all he needed to power up the gravitics which slowly lifted the massive ship up from its berth, another retracted the landing legs into their housings. Then it was just a question of flying, manoeuvring carefully towards the center of the hangar bay and rising up through the iris' aperture, which narrowed and sealed beneath them, up through the rocky channel to the exterior door which opened into the surface of the Moon itself. Coming out they passed through a hologram which resembled the unspoiled surface of the crater as it had been prior to their arrival, something Selenis prepared after the Hammond's use of the hangar bay doors the previous month destroyed the natural camouflage the base had enjoyed for millions of years. "Jackson, patch me in to the Sun Tzu, will ya?" Hearing the acknowledgement Cam began speaking in Chinese, "=PLA Sun Tzu, this is Colonel Cameron Mitchell aboard Galadia, come in.="

"=Galadia, this is PLA Sun Tzu, I am Colonel Chang Jiaohui.=" came the curt reply.

"=Colonel Chang, we are mobilising to intercept the incoming ships.=" As he spoke he engaged the sublight engines and powered the arrow-shaped starship away from the Lunar surface. "=I understand your Government has not yet agreed to join our efforts, but I humbly request for you to consider lending us your aid, if the time comes and it becomes necessary.="

"=Sun Tzu will engage only at my discretion, Colonel Mitchell, Sun Tzu out.=" the Chinese commander signed off.

"=Your consideration is appreciated, Colonel, Galadia out.=" Cam signalled Daniel to cut the connection. Daniel eyed him appraisingly.

"That was well done, Mitchell." said the linguist. Vala looked between them in curiosity.

"What was that about?" she asked, turning her seat to face them.

"Cameron just got the Chinese to agree to support us even if their Government doesn't give the order." Daniel explained and Sam patted Cam on the arm and returned to her station. Over the next hour they were joined by Odyssey and a very thankful Colonel Hendricks acknowledged receipt of his new ZPM. The three American battlecruisers formed up defensively alongside Galadia at Earth's L2 Lagrangian point, one and a half million kilometers beyond Earth's orbit, which luckily was along the path of the incoming ships. Cam watched the ships in his mind as they exited hyperspace at the edge of the system. He nodded towards Daniel who opened communications. "Attention, unknown vessels, this is the Tau'ri starship, Galadia, identify yourselves and state your intentions, acknowledge." He set the message to repeat in another minute, but they didn't even have to wait for that. Silence was their only response, silence and the approach of several dozen very large projectiles which began powering towards Earth along a reciprocal orbital trajectory.

"Sam! They just launched something. Tell me what I'm looking at here." Cam called from the chair and Sam hurried over to stand over Daniel's sensor station. Her fingers flew over the console and her eyes scanned over several boxes of information.

"This isn't good, Cam, there are forty-eight projectiles incoming, all under power, all of them heavily shielded. Sensors are just about cutting through the interference and detecting about a third of them, the fastest projectiles, are emitting radiological readings."

"Nukes?" he asked incredulously.

"Extremely low yield according to this, there's virtually no payload." she explained.

"There's still sixteen of them, how much damage could they do?" he demanded.

"That's just it, Cam, I'd say they're not designed to do damage. This is what I'd do to create a quick and dirty EMP bomb." Her words were greeted with horrified silence. "Even with such a low yield, those sixteen devices could cripple large parts of our infrastructure and planetary defense. Detonated at two hundred kilometers above the surface, one bomb could affect most of the continental US."

"But they're not the real attack are they?" asked Daniel from beside her. She turned towards the console and entered a few commands to project three holograms of the devices bearing down on Earth. The first she had labelled EMP and pushed aside with a wave of her hand. With the next she peeled away the outer layer to reveal half a dozen crystal lenses, arranged in a spiral along the axis of the device, ahead of its propulsion unit and fuel cells. "Selenis is using Galadia as a relay for its sensor analysis routines and this is what she's produced so far." She pointed at a lens and zoomed in with a twirl of a finger. "These look like high power energy projection weapons of some kind. All the equipment surrounding them must be energy generation and distribution systems. I'm assuming this is some sort of point defense warhead. Designed to protect the real threat." She pushed the hovering lens away and the view of it zoomed out to show the entire device once more and she pulled the last device to her, similarly peeling away its outer skin to reveal row upon row of small triangular wedges, spiralling along the central core of the device.

"This looks like some sort of cluster weapon, Samantha Carter." Teal'c posited as he rose from his station and examined the hologram while clasping his hands behind his back. "Has Selenis identified the payload?"

"It's not explosive or radiological, Teal'c." Sam said softly. Vala's sharp intake of breath matched how they all felt.

"How many, Sam?" Cam asked in a strained voice.

"Twenty-four." she breathed.

"Jackson!" he called out urgently.

"On it!" Daniel started packaging the information and relaying it to the waiting ships and to Selenis, who relayed it to Homeworld Command.

Earth was under attack, unknown forces had just launched a biological scourge against them.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 6**

USS George Hammond, High Earth Orbit, July 2010

"His cover's blown. Move in. Move in now. They have a ship." Daniel's insistent voice cut in over the relayed transmission from the Pentagon onto the bridge of the newest Tau'ri battlecruiser, it was also being piped down into the cargo hold where Cameron, Teal'c and Vala had set up a containment and holding area in preparation for any prisoner extractions they might need to effect. Thanks to this relay Sam heard quite clearly Cam's muttered imprecations over his own comm to her.

"Sam, beam us down there, quick!" his words didn't drown out the typical noises of weapon preparation he, Teal'c and Vala were making. She pointed once at the technician ahead of her who was looking over her shoulder in Sam's direction and gave a nod. Before the tech had turned back to her panel however, Daniel's voice returned over the radio.

"Yeah… we're too late." his resigned tone made her grit her teeth, it meant the cargo ship would be cloaked already.

"I want the last vector that cargo ship took and make detailed scans along the trajectory. Try and find anything which might indicate the passage of a cloaked ship." She stood up and made her way to the sensor technician at the fore station on the bridge. "The smallest trace of a plasma leak or ionisation trail is all we need!" She could already see the lieutenant at the station shaking his head. She grimaced and raised her fingers to the comm in her ear. "Cam, we lost them, better get back up to the bridge."

"We're on our way, Sam." The frustration in his tone was very clear to her and she shared it. In spades. This was a complete mess. She was already in contact with the Pentagon when the other members of SG-1 rolled into the bridge, still in full tactical gear, minus weapons. Cameron strode purposefully to the screen and stood next to her.

"I want Daniel here with his equipment as soon as possible, Carter. We need to know what he saw." O'Neill continued his debrief already in progress with only a quick pause to give Cam his own share of a baleful look. "Then, you expedite Hammond's refit and get a ZPM from Selenis when you're done. I want to see SG-1 en route before Young leaves my office the next time he comes."

"Daniel should already be at the Pentagon, sir, we tagged him with a site-to-site beam as soon as he handed over the area to Captain Brandon of the lead assault team." Sam glanced at Cam in greeting before returning her gaze to the General. "His crew will be searching the area for any possible intel, though we don't expect to find anything." O'Neill nodded at that, knowing the chances were slim. "Sir, how confident are we of gaining anything from questioning Colonel Telford? If he has been brainwashed it will be almost impossible." She turned to Cam again when she saw him rub his chin, he had that look in his eyes Sam now associated with his recall of SG-1 mission reports.

"Without the facilities of the SGC they will have to take drastic measures to break the brainwashing." he said softly with a significant glance between Sam and the General. Her eyes widened slightly at his implication and she turned to O'Neill on the screen.

"We hope it doesn't come to that. I'll make an appearance on Destiny if necessary. After that..." Jack glanced away from both of them. Sam's eyes narrowed. "In the meantime buckle down on the refit and make sure you're ready for a go order, Homeworld Command out."

"Yes, sir, SG-1 out." she replied quietly. She glanced down at Cam's hand closed over her forearm and looked up to see an hint of gratitude in his eyes. She soon realised it was because of her sign off and smiled slightly. Turning to Teal'c and Vala who were looking at them expectantly. "Your turn with the memory device, Vala. I have to supervise the refit for a while." Cam nodded at her and rounded up the raven-haired alien, leaving the bridge with her. "Teal'c, can you take charge here on the bridge while I'm in engineering? Keep an eye on these kids." He smiled and bowed.

"Of course, Colonel Carter." He actually sat in the Big Chair. Sam was impressed. Several hours later she was just finishing a second set of power simulation tests on the ZPM harness when the Jaffa's voice came over the ship-wide comm. "Colonel Carter, Colonel Mitchell, please come to the bridge. We are receiving a transmission from General O'Neill." She ran out and headed for the elevator, as fast as her feet could carry her. Time was of the essence now. She ran into Cam in the short corridor running towards the bridge and they both arrived at the comm screen together. General O'Neill blinked at them as Teal'c turned towards them with a raised eyebrow.

"Are you sure they were in different parts of the ship, Teal'c?" O'Neill asked incredulously.

"Indeed, O'Neill. I am certain of it." Teal'c was still glancing at them, but his mien held a light mirth.

"Hunh. Guess you're right." Jack waved them down as they both came to attention in front of the screen. "We have the intel. Lucian Alliance is going to attack _Destiny_!" She looked at Cam and could see he was just as surprised as she was. "They've found another planet with a naquadria core and have it hooked into a Stargate. Why they want Destiny is beyond me. Telford must have told them it's a giant rustbucket."

"Sir, how confident are we about this intel?" Cam asked, not bothering to hide his incredulity.

"As confident as we can be. Telford also gave us coordinates." Cam nodded, but he still didn't look happy. "You'll lead the ground assault, Mitchell, we'd like to take the place intact if possible. Carter, you'll be in charge of space superiority and force protection." They both rattled off quick 'yes, sir's. "Oh, and can you take Daniel with you? I've heard enough about his relationship problems for one week." They saw a fist connecting with Jack's shoulder and heard a muffled giggle from behind them as Vala approached. "Go get your ZPM from the Moon and head off, Homeworld Command out." Sam turned to the beam tech behind her and signalled her order and almost immediately Daniel appeared at the front of the bridge. He glanced sheepishly at Vala for an instant before it was replaced with a glare at the rest of them.

They set off on the quick jaunt to Lunar orbit and manoeuvred into position above the Alteran base. Sam and Cam beamed into Selenis' 'gateroom together, thanks to the beam in area they'd marked off previously.

"~Welcome back, Colonel Mitchell, Colonel Carter.~" came the crisp tones of the base's computer and Sam smiled slightly at her newly acquired ability to understand it. "~Colonel Carter, are you able to understand me now?~" Sam looked up and saw Cam smiling at her as he quickly led them off to the main power junction.

"~Ah, yes, Selenis. The course I took was a success, though I am still training my brain. It will be good if you speak to me as much as possible.~" Sam couldn't believe she was actually asking the computer to have a conversation with her.

"~Of course, Colonel Carter.~" The computer was _very_ solicitous. "~I take it from your evident hurry and the-~" she couldn't make out the word, "~-of Dr. Jackson, Teal'c and Vala, that this stay will not be a prolonged one.~"

"~That's correct. We're here to pick up a Potentia for use in our ship. We're on a rescue mission.~" Sam hesitated a moment, but steeled herself. "~What was the word you just used then, Selenis? 'Evident hurry and the _what_ of Dr. Jackson.'" Selenis repeated itself, but Sam still didn't catch it, she shook her head and looked at Cam who was glancing at her.

"Absence." he translated with a smile.

"Absence. ~Absence.~" She repeated, faltering slightly on the new word and concept forming in her linguistic centers.

"~Commendable, Colonel Carter. If I may say, your accent is very similar to Dr. Jackson's.~" Cam was laughing his head off. Oh no! The base had compared her accent to Daniel's, of course Cam was laughing.

"~Thank you, Selenis.~" she replied only for Cam to laugh again. She aimed a swat at his arm.

"~If I may make a suggestion, given stellar coordinates for your destination I will be able to find the nearest Supergate to that location. It would take considerable time off any journey.~" At the suggestion Sam raised her head in thought for a moment and halted her steps. Cam stopped with her and she glanced his way. He nodded and continued towards the stairs and the main junction room while she turned on her heels and headed back to the 'gateroom.

"~That sounds like a great suggestion, Selenis. Could you open communications with the ship above our position, please.~" She had already arrived at the 'gateroom and was climbing the stairs nearest the corridor leading up to the right hand side balcony. A small sound played over her comm and she silently thanked the base's foresight at patching the subspace comms through her own earpiece. "Hammond, this is Carter, come in."

"Colonel Carter, this is Hammond. What is your status?" Teal'c's slight tone of concern made her smile.

"We're fine, Teal'c, Colonel Mitchell is retrieving the ZPM, but Selenis just made a very intriguing suggestion. Patch through the stellar coordinates of the Lucian Alliance outpost to the base please." When Selenis indicated she had received the transmission and located a suitable Supergate, Sam asked for it to be displayed on a galactic map above the control console, the base obliged. It was damned close to the Lucian Alliance planet. They would be there in less than half an hour after leaving the Supergate. "Captain Kennedy, we're opening Selenis' hangar bay, come inside, we're taking a trip via the Supergate." By this time Cam had already returned to her side and was watching her hands fly over the neighbouring hangar bay control console and they both looked up above them as the iris over the hangar slowly twisted and widened. She leaned in to Cam and said under her breath, "I just wonder how much power this is going to use. Opening a wormhole connection of that diameter is extremely draining."

"~It is not necessary to use the full width of the Supergate to admit a vessel as small as yours, Colonel Carter.~" Both Air Force officers looked up in surprise.

"~Do you mean we can alter the diameter of the Supergate's wormhole connection?~"

"~Of course.~" Several buttons lit up on the Supergate console and lines of text floated across the display in shallow boxes.

"A variable geometry Stargate. That's... genius." Sam laughed giddily as her fingers flew over the controls. The Supergate at the far end of the hangar began twisting on itself, narrowing its aperture much like an iris.

"Hammond, this is Mitchell." Cam had touched the stud on his comm and was watching as the wormhole established inside the two hundred meter aperture Sam had left inside the Supergate. "Captain Kennedy, sorry about this, but you'll only have two hundred meters to squeeze through."

"Colonel Mitchell, I believe Captain Kennedy is feeling insulted right now." Sam laughed at Teal'c's words and Cam chuckled.

"I meant no offense, Captain. I'm sure you're up to the task." Cam patted Sam's shoulder indicating they should prepare to leave. They both paused as the muffled voice of the young woman piloting the Tau'ri battlecruiser floated over the comm.

"Says the guy who used Odyssey as ninety-thousand ton catcher's mitt to stop a three hundred mile an hour fastball the size of a pea." Sam immediately raised her hands to ward off Cam, but he was having none of it.

"Captain," They both heard the dismayed squeak in their ear, "you'll apologise to Colonel Carter for comparing her to a pea." His voice was serious, but the glint in his eyes had Sam shaking her head and sighing.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 365 days relative

She watched as he ran down the corridor again. He'd run through the ship so much that every part of it had his mark on it in some form or another. His heels kicked up all the way to the backs of his thighs as he powered away from her and veered out of sight around a corner. She'd let him down. She'd let all of them down. It would be a year tomorrow, including the leap day. She frowned slightly in thought, did you have to include the leap day inside a time dilation field considering only femtoseconds had passed outside of it? If you went strictly by a calendar to mark days, then yes. They were still keeping track that way. They had decided they would so that they could celebrate birthdays and other festivities. They needed something to look forward to. She turned and walked towards the elevator.

Cam had been growing distant from all of them. He spent more and more time running in the mornings. Sometimes they went more than a day only seeing him at mealtimes. He'd eat quickly then disappear again. Teal'c saw him most often, and even then it was only for their sparring sessions. They'd also been getting longer according to the Jaffa, he wasn't worried yet, the most he'd admit to was concern. He'd asked her to try to talk to Cam, but what could she say? If he was avoiding anyone more than the rest, it was her. She'd tried to give him a birthday present a week or so ago and he'd been like a stranger. A quick thank you and a smile which didn't reach his eyes. She reached the elevator and pressed the call button. It didn't take long for the doors to open, but she hesitated. Something pulled her head around to follow the corridor down to the end. Something tugged at her and she found her heels turning around and her feet stepping to follow Cam's route through the ship's passageways. She walked, turning occasionally down side corridors until she found herself at an observation deck on the port side of the ship.

The shimmering blues, mottled greens and wispy whites of P3X-474 shone through the window, unmoving, ever constant within their little bubble of nearly frozen time. She stepped into the room and soon noticed Cam sitting against the wall not far from the furthest view port as it rose up from the deck at an angle. He was clasping his wrists across bent knees and leaning his head against the bulkhead while staring out at the planet. If he noticed her he made no move to show it. She padded over and still received no reaction, even when she sat down beside him he remained motionless. She rested her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes, taking in the scent of him on his hooded top. She was just happy he had let her get this close with no protest. In fact it took her by surprise when he finally did speak.

"I'm sorry about how I treated you on my birthday. It wasn't right." She opened her eyes and glanced up at his face, he was still staring out the window so she lay her head back on his shoulder.

"It's okay, Cam-" She stopped and gave a wry smile. "Well no, it's not okay, but I understand. I really do." His head rolled down and rested on the top of hers and she sighed.

"Sam, this whole situation, I..." he stopped and sighed, falling silent for long moments before resuming. "I'm losing myself." There was nothing she could say to that. Nothing more she could do than what she was doing now. She wanted to do more, so much more, but sometimes she felt as if everything that happened on this ship was just a mirage, an illusion that was going to fade away on a breeze. Vala had come to her a few months ago with an eager desire to help her, Sam was just glad of the company even if her ideas were outlandish. However, something Vala had said had stuck with her. One idea had left a little germ of a seed and now it was driving Sam completely. And if it succeeded it would mean nothing that happened on this ship would be real. A thought which sometimes left her feeling bereft. She felt Cam's head lift from hers and he shifted and let it hang down against his chest.

"Cam?" She lifted her head to look at him and he did the same to meet her gaze.

"Sam, if I go crazy..." Her eyes widened slightly, but her features eased when she caught the reference in his twinkling eyes, laying her head back on his shoulder.

"I'll still call you Superman." She smiled at having just a little bit of the old Cam still with her.

* * *

Galadia, Earth's L2 Lagrangian Point, August 2010

Sam was back at the engineering console running simulations and orbital trajectory calculations. Things weren't looking promising. As it was, their attack window on the incoming projectiles was not large, only twenty minutes or so. They needed more firepower.

"~Galadia, estimated time of arrival for the Jaffa and Tok'ra contingents?~" As if in answer to her question, three Ha'taks exited hyperspace right in front of them and Daniel soon had the commander of the lead Tok'ra ship on a holographic display projected between the two forward stations.

"Greetings from the Tok'ra, Tau'ri vessels. I am Thellas. We have received your call for aid and stand ready to assist." He glanced to his left and his eyes widened slightly. Obviously Daniel was keeping himself busy. "I see, this is grave indeed. We shall join your formation."

"Thank you, Thellas," replied Cam from the control chair, "Colonel Mitchell of SG-1 here, aboard Galadia. Welcome to the party." Cam was bringing up a tactical display on Sam's monitor and laying out several options, some she'd already considered and discarded, others looked interesting and might buy them a few more minutes. She indicated a few for him and passed them back. With that he arranged an order of battle which had Galadia moving in first to engage the EMP bombs, with Ancient technology being generally impervious to the effect, she stood the best chance of peeling away that protective layer from this assault. The Tok'ra Ha'taks would then begin engaging the point defense warheads while the Terran vessels assisted with rail guns and missiles and covered them with their stronger shields. If that phase went well they'd be able to engage the biological warheads. It was a safe bet they'd be heavily shielded. Galadia powered up and set off on an intercept course with the incoming missiles. "Sam, Jackson, better get some weapons for yourselves too, we'll need the firepower." Sam glanced over her shoulder at the back of the command chair, she had to agree with that assessment, turning back to the unused console beside her she configured it with a fire control interface and the holographic display came to life with a tactical plot and overlaid on that a targeting interface with a realtime visual feed. She assigned some of the unclaimed plasma cannons to her fire control and started coordinating with the others via Galadia's targeting computer, then had the display swap with the engineering screen above the console she sat in.

They were soon in range and the warheads began juking and manoeuvring erratically across her displays, she opened up with her cannons and was soon scoring hits, but only doing minimal damage to the missile's shields. She increased the yield of her cannon fire to compensate. Cam began firing drones, taking control of ten or so and sending them against the leading EMP bomb, which chose instead to detonate, bathing Galadia in radiation and electromagnetic flux, which she defiantly ignored. The missiles were already passing them by on this tight intercept course, their relative delta-v was steep, though nothing for which the targeting computer couldn't compensate.

Cam's drones were chewing through their assigned targets, ripping through shields and armour like paper, destroying engines and warhead in actinic explosions. Sam's higher yield plasma beams were also scoring hits, though it took more than a dozen to eat through the quickly regenerating shields on the warheads. With only a couple of EMP bombs left Cam signalled Daniel to order the other ships to move in on the point defense warheads, while he began an orbital manoeuvre to reacquire targets as they closed on Galadia from behind. Sam focused her display on the view behind them and watched as the Tok'ra Ha'taks moved in alongside the rest of the warhead swarm from ahead, letting it slowly gain ground on them. The smaller, but more agile Terran vessels shadowed them with their more powerful shields, keeping between the Tok'ra and the warheads. It was a good thing, as soon as the ships began to fire on the quickly evading warheads, they started rapidly spinning along their axis, bringing each energy beam lens to bear on its target in quick succession, creating a rapid fire gatling gun effect which poured fire into the Tau'ri ships' ZPM-augmented shielding.

"Cam, we need to get back there to assist." she called over her shoulder as she watched the Tau'ri railguns and Tok'ra plasma beams striking the shielded drones, whittling away at their heavy defense.

"Working on it, Sam." he replied tightly, obviously working through the complex manoeuvres in his mind along with Galadia. As it was, the swarm was catching up to them, Cam was really trying to ensure they wouldn't pass by too quickly as they were still accelerating towards Earth. She soon found her weapon display flash the lead point defense drone as in range of her aft cannons and she opened fire. The angle was oblique, but even grazing shots were depleting the shields. Three of the warheads abruptly switched targets to Galadia and coordinated together to pour rapid firing lances of plasma into her hull-hugging aft shields. Sam's engineering displays flashed up Cam's attempts to direct power from forward shields to aft and she switched displays momentarily, entering several command sequences to accomplish the shield power management operation, before switching back to fire control. The ship itself was rocking, they could feel the barely absorbed impacts on the engine cowling from here on the bridge, some eighteen hundred meters away. Sam scored several hits on a drone and it exploded in a spiralling flurry of debris which struck another warhead, taking it off course and giving her a better angle to target it. She sliced it in half and its engine exploded, taking the rest of it up in a flash of rapidly extinguished flame. The fire from the Tok'ra ships was weakening the shields on the remaining warheads allowing the Tau'ri railguns to start tearing through them. Cam fired a slew of drones and each danced around its spinning target, striking and cutting and ripping. The warheads were taking their toll however, Apollo and a Tok'ra ship were venting atmosphere and limping badly, trailing behind and losing ground. By the time the last point defense warhead exploded, severely damaging the Tok'ra ship it had veered off into at the last second, the swarm was just outside Lunar orbit and well ahead of Thellas' ship, the Hammond and Odyssey and just overshooting Galadia, thanks to their higher delta-v. Sam fired her cannons non-stop at the shielded warheads. With no weapons of any kind, all the warhead's energy was directed to its shields. Sam increased the yield on her cannons once more and staggered their rate of fire so as to give the missiles' shields less time to recover. Cam's drones however, were struggling to overcome the strength and rapidly alternating frequency spreads of the warhead shields, gouging into them without penetrating. They had destroyed several, but they were also running out of time. The drones were already struggling to keep up and the targeting computer was becoming unable to compensate for the difference in velocity of their targets.

An alarm bell sounded, heralding the formation of a subspace anomaly ahead of them, an opening hyperspace window was disgorging a line of Ha'taks in High Earth Orbit which immediately opened fire on the incoming warheads. Their comm display reappeared between the forward stations and Sam couldn't help breaking into a welcoming smile at the face which gazed back at them.

"It is good to see you, my friends, however dire the circumstances. The Free Jaffa is here to assist our Tau'ri allies." Bra'tac's greeting lightened the mood on the bridge considerably.

"It is good to see you also, old friend. Your arrival is timely indeed, and your assistance urgently required." Teal'c intoned from his station even as he continued pouring plasma fire into the missiles rapidly leaving Galadia behind. The Jaffa ships were definitely taking a toll on the incoming warheads, but their window of engagement was very tight as they essentially formed a static screen which the missiles would quickly pass through. In the end, four warheads survived the curtain of fire poured forth from the Jaffa ships.

"~I can no longer compensate for the velocity differentials to the targets.~" stated Galadia matter-of-factly and Sam cursed, they were essentially shooting blind now.

"We need to get closer. Hyperdrive?" Cam suggested.

"Won't work, ours is so fast we can't control jumps that small." Sam replied. Cam grumbled then veered Galadia up off the pursuit.

"Cameron, what are you doing?" asked a worried Vala, Daniel spun around in his seat.

"Are you crazy, Mitchell?" he yelled in anger.

"Like a fox. If we can't get there from here then first we go somewhere from where we can." he muttered. "That sounded better in my head."

"~No it didn't, Colonel Mitchell.~" rebutted the ship. He frowned, glaring up at the ceiling.

"Sam, time?" he called out loudly. Her mind raced and she quickly understood what Cam was going to do. He _was_ crazy. Crazy and amazing. She looked down at her tactical display.

"Fifty-five seconds to atmospheric insertion." she cried "Fifty seconds." She lowered her voice and spoke in a calm tone. "Do it, Superman." The ship leapt into hyperspace and emerged seconds later several AU above the plane of the Ecliptic where Cam came about to reverse his course, a target box encasing a tiny blue-green dot on their forward view.

"Saddle up, boys and girls, it's seat of the pants time." Another hyperspace window formed and they leapt inside for several seconds, emerging amid a fiery conflagration in the forward views and the wild buffeting and bucking of Earth's upper atmosphere.

"~Atmospheric re-entry underway, current altitude one hundred kilometers, course will take us west over the Pacific, targets re-acquired on a parallel trajectory four hundred meters above us. Your course was flawless, Colonel Mitchell.~" Galadia intoned and Sam turned back to her weapons screen and opened fire. Damn, Cam hit the Kármán line right on the nose.

"~Your timing on the jump was pretty good too, Galadia.~" Cam returned the compliment.

"Hate to be the bearer of bad news," Daniel called from his station, "but the computer is spitting out possible impact sites for these warheads. They must have some sort of AI targeting because they're still changing attitude and it looks like they're aiming for maximum casualties. southeast China, Indian subcontinent, central and western Europe, east coast of the US." Just about every area of high population density in the northern hemisphere. They all quietly turned towards their weapons consoles with renewed determination. Cam fired two drones which began tearing into the lead warhead, but she noticed on the tactical plot that whenever he tried firing another it would invariably spiral away and tumble inertly. She glanced over her shoulder and wondered how much concentration he must be using just keeping them stable as they tore through Earth's atmosphere. The two lead warheads exploded under their combined fire which caused the remaining two warheads to alter attitude to change targets, Sam quickly began firing at the still intact warheads, but they were out of time. Their visual feeds showed panels on the sides of the warheads opening, acting as air brakes which Cam was now having to compensate for to keep the warheads in range. The braking caused the warheads to begin spiralling, and with each revolution Sam got a very good view at all the triangular wedges, each filled with a biological payload, ready to emerge over western Russia and Europe. She cursed and gritted her teeth as Galadia began shaking heavily in the buffeting. A crackling filled the air and a strained voice yelling in rapid-fire Chinese washed over the bridge. The Sun Tzu! "Incoming!" yelled Daniel, in what must have been a very succinct translation. She grabbed onto the arms of her chair and managed to spare a glance at her engineering console as she noticed Cam had completely cut power to weapons and diverted it all to dorsal shields, structural integrity and inertial dampening. Oh crap! She hoped they weren't using nukes. A bright flash washed over the viewport followed by a huge crack, not bright or loud enough to be a nuclear explosion, but enough to make Galadia shudder and groan, lurching down wildly. It was followed by a second and a third and then a fourth which saw Sam sprawling on the deck and sliding into the back of the control chair, clutching at the back of her head while power surges showered sparks over her and small explosions from overloaded relays filled the bridge with smoke. Daniel was slumped over his console, shaking his head groggily. Several more lurches without accompanying explosions had her thinking they were really in trouble.

"~The remaining two warheads were destroyed,~" Galadia intoned calmly and Sam breathed a sigh of relief, "~enemy ships entering hyperspace, all targets have been neutralised. Atmospheric re-entry vector is too steep for this velocity, Colonel Mitchell, current altitude twenty-five kilometers.~" Oh crap. They were going to crash.

"I'm... working... on it." Cam replied shakily from beyond her line of sight as he sat in the chair. She scrambled to her knees and crawled around to the side of the control chair. Sparing a glance for Teal'c and Vala who seemed none the worse for wear. The sight of Cam caused her to gasp sharply. His jaw was clenched tightly, the muscles in his neck stood out like cords of taut rope as he struggled to concentrate. His hands gripped the arms of the chair at the manual interfaces while his brow furrowed deeply over tightly shut eyes. She wrestled with her fear, trying to figure out what she could do, what he needed her to do for him. She got up on one knee, lifted herself up the rest of the way, gripping the back of the reclined chair for balance as the bridge heaved and bucked all around them. For a moment, time seemed to slow down and crystallise before her as she looked down into his face and he opened his eyes to look straight at her. The blue fire in them took her breath away. She leaned down and gently brushed her lips against his as she lay a hand over his heart.

"Show me your super-human might, Cam." she breathed into his ear and his eyes flashed when she pulled away. He closed them again in concentration and she felt Galadia lurch under her feet, dropping away like a stone and she feared the worst until a sudden roll to port accompanied by a whining groan from the vessel saw her rolling back the other way, before pitching up and powering hard against gravity in a hard slog for orbit. She had no idea how he'd done it. She had no intention of asking him. She _really _didn't want to know what kind of crazy-ass thing he thought of at the last minute. She just wrapped her hands around his head and kissed him hard.

An hour later, they'd debriefed over subspace comms with Bra'tac, Thellas and General O'Neill, who mentioned the slight headache they were having trying to explain the fireworks in the upper atmosphere over the Pacific coast and central Asia. The Tok'ra mentioned they had sent cloaked Al'kesh after the unknown ships which had blazed out of system much more swiftly than they had arrived, no longer burdened as they were with half a dozen warheads apiece. Bra'tac called Cameron insane, but a good kind of insane. Since then, Sam had forced him to rest. They had come here to the Observation Deck while Galadia piloted them back to Lunar orbit at a leisurely pace as the AI diagnosed damage in her systems. Sam sat on a curved-back bench with Cam's head in her lap and stroked his hair while he dozed. She watched Luna slowly grow larger through the quarter bubble of the view window.

"~Dr. Carter? Will Colonel Mitchell be alright?~" Sam was startled by the softness of the ship's voice. She looked down at her love and soon smiled gently, brushing her fingers across his cheek.

"~Yes, Galadia, he just needs to rest.~" she replied.

"~I am glad. He is a remarkable commander.~" Sam looked up at the ceiling above her head for a moment then glanced at the Moon through the window and the stars shining steadily behind it. She smiled softly at how these Alteran AIs were becoming a very important part of their lives so quickly.

"~Thank you. You are a mighty warrior, Galadia.~" she breathed softly.

"~Thank you, Dr. Carter.~" burbled the ship's AI. Sam could clearly hear the pleasure in her tone.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 7**

RAF Manston, Kent, August 1944

Cam stepped off the ladder onto the tarmac and handed his helmet to the member of the ground staff waiting patiently by the nose of his Gloster Meteor F.1. He'd taken command of No. 616 Squadron RAF once they began flying the jets since no one else could handle the brutes quite like he could. They were the fastest thing the Allies had, though they were still over a hundred miles an hour slower than the Me-262s used by the Luftwaffe. He grimaced slightly as he loosened some of the straps on his flight suit, she was a rough bird. He was startled by someone calling him and turned around.

"Wing Commander Carter!" It was Flight Lieutenant Hodgkins. The kid had followed him from No. 609, good lad. He was walking up to the apron where Cam had parked his jet, escorting an officer from the US Army Air Force.

"What is it, Hodgkins?" He pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his pocket as the two men approached.

"Sir, this is Major Treadwell, he's come from US Eighth Air Force Command at Bushy Park." He indicated the shorter man beside him, who regarded Cam rather dismissively.

"What can I do for the USAAF, Major?" Cam turned his own gaze at the man and frowned slightly.

"I was informed that there was an American-" He was stopped as Cam raised his hand in front of his face. Hodgkins was wincing beside him.

"How long have you been on this side of the Pond, Major?" he asked with a steely edge to his voice.

"About three weeks, why?" replied the man with an irritated look. Cam rolled his eyes and looked at Hodgkins.

"Major Treadwell, Wing Commander would be the equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel in your service. You're addressing a superior officer, sir." he whispered as an aside to the Major, whose eyes widened.

"I'm sorry, sir. It was presumptuous of me to speak as I did." He seemed contrite enough so Cam decided to let him off the hook.

"That's fine, Major, let's start from the top. What can I do for the USAAF?" He looked down the airfield to see another Meteor taking off with two more waiting to taxi behind it.

"Sir, it has come to the attention of General Spaatz's staff that an American was serving here with No. 616, flying Meteors." As the Major spoke Cam raised his eyebrow. Unofficially it was no secret he was an American. Officially he was Canadian, it was the only way he could have joined up back in '39. "VIII Fighter Command has recently received some new planes from the States-"

"The YP-80As." Cam stated matter-of-factly and the Major's eyes widened in alarm. "It's irrelevant how I know, Major, carry on."

"Yes, sir, we received orders from General Spaatz to bring you aboard to head up the test group, sir. Repatriate you, so to speak." Treadwell's glance now was more apprehensive, Cam knew things he wasn't supposed to and that had him on edge. Another thing Cam knew was that the YP-80A never saw combat during the war. He'd effectively be done with it. His eyes narrowed.

"Orders you say? You've gone to RAF Fighter Command G/HQ already then?" he asked of the suddenly nervous Major. Hodgkins was looking away discretely.

"Uh, yes, sir. They've agreed, I have your new orders. You will be attached to VIII Fighter Command and granted commission in the USAAF." Treadwell handed Cam a sealed envelope and he opened it. Inside was exactly what the Major described, seems he was back to being a Lt. Colonel again, no, wait, the commission was for full bird Colonel. He sighed and turned to Hodgkins, holding out his hand. The young man took it and shook it sharply before saluting.

"It was an honour, Wing Commander." he said and Cam saluted him in turn.

"Stay alive, Hodgkins. I'll be back to see your kids when this is all done." He gave Hodgkins a lop-sided grin at the young man's emphatic nod and turned to frown at the Major again, whom he was going to take great pleasure in terrorising from now on. "Dismissed, Major."

* * *

Galar, December 2005

"We shouldn't do this." Cam said as he pulled away from the kisses he was sharing with Dr, Reya Varrick. She was beautiful and smart and funny, and it had been quite some time since that flight attendant, but he felt... strange. Like he was doing something he would seriously regret.

"You wouldn't have come here if you didn't want to." she breathed, running her fingers through the short hair at the back of his head, resting her forehead against his cheek. The warmth of her skin against his was throwing him off.

"Mm, I didn't say I didn't want to." He kissed Reya again. He did want to. He wanted something that wouldn't disappear as soon as someone said the wrong word or breathed the wrong way or thought the wrong thing at the wrong time. He desperately wanted to kiss her. Caress her cheek. Look into her eyes and tell her everything. He just wanted her to be Sam. He closed his eyes and raised his hands to Reya's cheeks, cupping her face in them and pulling away from her slowly. "I just... I... can't." He brushed his fingers over the skin of her right cheek as he opened his eyes, seeing the confusion turn into sadness then resignation.

"I can't be someone else." she whispered while placing her hand over his, stilling his fingers against her face. He shook his head with a sigh.

"No, you can't, and you deserve far better than what I can give because of that. You're amazing and... I can't-" His thoughts evaporated as a sound caught his attention, he turned his head towards the hall past the kitchen, but saw nothing. He glanced at Reya and saw the same alarm in her eyes as she clutched at his arm. "Stay here." He pulled her hand from his green jacket and walked through the kitchen. He turned as he heard Reya starting to follow him and shook his head sternly at her. She steeled her features and opened her mouth to voice a rebuff, but closed her eyes and nodded after he drew his lips together tightly and frowned in warning. He padded along silently past the drinks cabinet and looked to the end of a side corridor. Before he could turn back he felt a sharp stab of pain in his right shoulder, he shuddered and fell to his knees against the wall, his muscles spasming involuntarily and his vision clouding over. Pitching forwards his cheek connected with the cold tile floor and he could see feet walking past his nose.

He couldn't hear anything except buzzing, his vision greyed out and cleared intermittently and his muscles barely worked. He couldn't pass out. He had to stop this, whatever this was. Help Reya. Pulling his arm along the floor he planted his palm on the tile in front of his face. His fingers wouldn't respond to him, but he pushed against the floor and planted his other arm under him. Stumbling up to one knee he tried to push up against the wall onto his feet, but fell back down to his knees with his face pressed against the plaster. Gritting his teeth he lifted a foot and once more planted it into the ground. Leaning on the knee with a shaking hand he lifted himself up to balance against the wall. His knees were screaming at him and he nearly fell again, stumbling past the cabinet back towards the end of the hall. He pitched forwards into the kitchen in time to see a man in a dark knee-length suit, in the Galaran style, standing over Reya's still form. As his face struck the tiles again he saw Reya's glassy stare looking straight at him while a pool of red liquid spread from behind her head. Pain flashed through him again, blossoming in his right side, his temples throbbed and the buzzing in his ears became a horrible, keening whine. He was roughly kicked on to his back, he tried to look into the face of the killer, but could not make out any features, his vision was blurry and faded in and out. Hands, sticky with blood, gripped his and began dragging him back towards the hall and he blacked out.

Half a day later he was sitting in a cell doubting his sanity, while the other members of SG-1 stood beyond the bars in the hall. How could they stand to look at him? He felt a cold, hollow filthiness rising up from inside him. He couldn't bear to have them look at him. No, he couldn't bear to see the look in their eyes when they looked at him. The look in hers. He'd just murdered someone in cold blood. He saw it clearly every time his eyes closed.

"It wasn't you, okay? These people can implant memories." Daniel said from the other side of the bars. Cam snorted slightly in disgust. He knew that! He'd experienced it! It changed nothing!

"Yeah, I've been trying to tell myself the same thing all morning." He looked at Daniel with an intense pain in his eyes. "It doesn't stop me from still seeing her face. What if I told you everything that happened to you yesterday was a false memory? How would you know the difference?" He knew he hadn't killed Reya, except he also _knew_ he had. He remember kissing her, telling her it was a bad idea, but confirming her opinion that he wanted to. Then things went blurry and strange. Strangest of all that he hadn't stopped kissing her right after that when his thoughts filled with Sam. He was sure he would have stopped.

"The Emissary would like to speak with the prisoner." said a security officer who came up alongside his teammates. Jackson and Teal'c nodded and began to move past the man, but Sam raised a hand and indicated she wanted a moment. The officer looked between her and Cam and nodded once, turning away with the other two in tow. Sam stepped closer and placed her hands on the bars.

"Cameron, I _know_ you didn't do it. Nothing will convince me otherwise, do you understand?" The fierceness in her eyes when he finally met her gaze made him want to cry. He looked away and pushed himself off the bench he was sitting on, turning to look out the barred window behind him.

"I know, Sam, but all I can remember is swinging that statue. I've never felt such rage. Never. And that's what scares me. I remember the rage, but not the reason." He glanced over his shoulder and met her eyes. "So, I _know_ I didn't do it, and it's driving me crazy, like I don't know myself anymore." He looked out the window once again.

"Cam, look at me." she called and he dropped his head and brought his hand up to squeeze his eyes shut. "Look at me." Her soft voice pulled him around to meet her eyes. She reached out to him and smiled, beckoning him with her fingers. "I'll still call you Superman. Just remember that." He snorted and closed his eyes with a sigh. Looking at her again he reached out and took her hand in his, feeling her fingers closing around it and squeezing hard. "_I_ know you, Cam. I _know_ you. Don't doubt that." Even when the guard came by again she wouldn't let go of his hand until he looked into her eyes and nodded in acceptance.

* * *

New York, May 2009 (alternate timeline)

"You have to admit, Sam, you and Cameron have the weirdest marriage ever." Daniel smiled at her with a hand in his pocket and the other on his cane while they walked side by side on the path by Conservatory Water. Spring was well under way in Central Park, where they whiled away the hour or so until they were due to meet Cam to celebrate his birthday. She bumped his shoulder and smiled at him, pushing a windblown lock of hair back around her ear.

"Weird for a dead person and someone who was never born, you mean?" she clarified and he chuckled, shrugging. "The scientist in me sometimes wants to sit down and quantify exactly how much our marriage differs from the norm. Then I just remember that I love him, and that he loves me, and that one way or the other we'll make things work." She looked at him with all the confidence she had, her version of the look Cam always gave her as she looked in his eyes when they discussed this very topic. Daniel threw up a hand in surrender, leaning on his cane slightly.

"I know. I know. I believe you." He crooked his arm out and she slipped her hand through it. "When Vala first came to me with a myriad of questions about you I was thoroughly confused." Sam looked at him in puzzlement. "This was just after Cam took over. When Vala first arrived and I had that theory about Merlin's treasure being under Glastonbury Tor." She raised an eyebrow. "She wanted to know all about you because she was absolutely certain Mitchell was in love with you."

"Is that what Cam meant by her figuring him out after five minutes?" she asked from behind her fingers raised to her lips. Daniel shrugged.

"I told her she was crazy. I mean, as far as I knew you two hadn't seen each other more than a few times for years before his crash. I told her about that time I met him at the dinner ceremony in D.C. and how you two talked most of the night, she just told me that proved it." Sam remembered the night well. She'd been nervous introducing Cam to Jack and Daniel. He was a part of her past that she'd wanted her teammates to accept. "I remember him being cocky back then too, but I guess that comes with being a pilot." Daniel chuckled. "Vala asked me one thing after I talked about that night, want to know what it was?" Sam glanced at him and nodded her head. "She asked me if you played with your hair while you talked with Mitchell. I couldn't remember if you had, but I did remember your smile when you talked with him. Funny that. I suppose It must have been because I hardly ever saw you smile that way." Sam blushed slightly and nodded. "When I told her that, she grinned and said that was even better. After she met you that first time she came rushing to me when we were aboard Odyssey-"

"No!" Sam looked horrified and shook her head. "She didn't!" Daniel grinned and nodded.

"She did!" he confirmed. "She came bounding over and grabbed my arm and told me she was absolutely sure you were in love with Cameron too." Sam blushed crimson and covered her face in her hands. "I told her she couldn't be right, and that it didn't matter even if that were the case, because the frat regs would keep anything from happening. She just scoffed and bet me that the two of you would end up together. I bet her that if you did it would only be after one of you left SG-1." Sam looked at him askance as he breathed in through gritted teeth. "I tell you, Vala was sweating bullets that whole year you were on Atlantis." She laughed and he joined her. "Now I've won the bet and I can't collect because she's somewhere out in space, probably with a Goa'uld in her head." He looked at the ground and drew his lips tight.

"You miss her, don't you?" she asked him gently after a few moments and he turned to smile sadly at her.

"Like you wouldn't believe. Like _I_ wouldn't have believed if you had told me the first day I met her." She leaned against him and rubbed her hand over his arm as they walked on over the grass towards the lake.

* * *

Selenis, Luna, August 2010

"No offense, Thellas," Cam muttered in frustration, "you have no idea how grateful I am that you came to help us out, and we never would have been able to catch the bastards leaving ourselves, but how can you be saying you lost them?" His disappointment must have been clearly in evidence. "What happened?" Thellas nodded with a rueful smile, he clearly understood Cam's frustration, sharing it himself. Bra'tac watched them both impassively, General Landry's brow furrowed sternly and General O'Neill looked slightly bored. They were all gathered in front of subspace comm screens on their respective commands. Sam stood next to him while Teal'c hovered nearby behind them.

"Our operatives followed the enemy vessels until they dropped out of hyperspace." The Tok'ra began. "With the aid of Selenis' sensor telemetry we were able to stay clear of their sensor range ourselves, but they must have had a plan in case of being followed. Shortly after stopping we detected several matter streams moving back and forth between all the ships," Sam glanced at Cameron and he shook his head with a shrug, he had no idea what that was about, "then each vessel entered hyperspace on a different vector. We had only two vessels and both followed after one ship. However, each reported the vessel they followed self-destructed sometime after entering hyperspace again."

"The volume of ring activity was used to mask the transfer of all crews to a single vessel." Teal'c posited. "The other vessels were fated to self-destruct, perhaps all of them, if there was a cloaked vessel already waiting at the rendezvous point. We were very unfortunate, Colonel Mitchell, but no more." Thellas nodded gratefully at Teal'c and Cam sighed, covering his eyes.

"I know, Teal'c. I'm just venting. Sorry, Thellas, like I said, I'm really grateful for your help." Cam looked at the Tok'ra in apology.

"I understand, Colonel Mitchell. I share your consternation." Thellas nodded. "Such an enemy will be a thorn in all our sides, identifying them and their motives is imperative."

"I agree, Thellas." Bra'tac offered with a nod. "Such a foe must be dealt with promptly. They fight without honour, shying from open battle in favour of cowardly terror attacks. Had it not been for the forewarning provided by your new base I shudder to think what losses the Tau'ri would have suffered yesterday." That was something none of them wished to contemplate. He'd spent the previous night, after returning to Selenis, holding on to Sam like a drowning man. She'd huddled into his embrace in turn.

"Have we learned anything from the debris recovered, General?" Sam asked into the lull.

"No, Carter, we've never seen anything like it. At least that's what the report said." Jack replied with a look of slight surprise, he's not usually the one providing technical information to Sam. She nodded and looked away for a while in thought. "Needless to say we're running all the tests we can think of and some we didn't, thanks to the Tok'ra." He received a piece of paper from off screen and scanned it quickly. "Sorry guys, we have to wrap this up here, I'm being summoned by the boss. Let's get together again soon, maybe do lunch." Thellas and Bra'tac nodded and signed off, but a look from O'Neill had Sam and Cam staying on the line. "Mitchell, Bra'tac is right you know, you're crazy." Cam smiled sheepishly.

"Yes, sir." he replied and rubbed the back of his neck.

"The President sent me word that the Chinese Government is very grateful you destroyed the warhead targeting them first." O'Neill tilted his head to the side.

"It was the first one in line, sir. That's all." Cam muttered

"I know, but it still helps us with them. Sun Tzu blowing up the last two headed for Russia and Europe has them crowing though." Jack smirked ruefully. "We'll talk about it later, Hank has further orders for you kids, O'Neill out." Both of them focused on General Landry whose features softened.

"Exceptional job yesterday, SG-1. Tell Jackson and Vala for me, as well. You did us all proud." He smiled while his eyebrows rose high on his forehead.

"Thank you, sir." both Sam and Cam said automatically while Teal'c nodded respectfully.

"Obviously we have to figure out who did this. This has become the SGC's top priority. SG-1 will also take part in this, but I want to stress that your work on Selenis is also important. Dr. Carter, concentrate your efforts as you have been." Sam nodded. "Mitchell, I want you to get Teal'c, Jackson and Vala on the search full time. You need to stay on top of everything yourself." Cam and Teal'c nodded in acknowledgement as well. "Get to work, SG-1, SGC out." Cam came to attention with a quick 'yes, sir' until the connection was cut. He leaned back against the communications console and Sam leaned against him.

"Yesterday was a good day, Colonel Mitchell. Our foe's attack was repulsed and our bonds with our allies were strengthened." Teal'c intoned from behind them. "We could not ask for more under the circumstances."

"Yesterday was a freakin' tough day, T-man, and I wanna ask for a week off to sleep!" Cam grinned at his friend over his shoulder and the Jaffa nodded with a slight smile.

"Sam, Cameron, Teal'c, you need to see this." Daniel called over the radio. He and Vala had left in the middle of the conference call and gone to one of the deeper tiers being investigated by the engineers when they received a rather panicky call from the search party's leader.

"What is it, Daniel?" asked Sam. The three SG-1 members were moving towards a transporter a little way along one of the curving corridors leading off from the 'gate room.

"The search team found what looks like a stasis chamber cluster room, and well, one of them isn't empty." Sam's face drained of all colour and Teal'c blinked in surprise. Cam ran the last ten meters to the transporter with the other two close on his heels.

"~Selenis, how come you didn't tell us we have a house guest?~" he asked, stepping out into a corridor not far from Daniel's position. He ran into the room to be greeted by the sight of one occupied stasis chamber, with several connecting leads and cables disgorging out of an open panel at the side and ending at an untidy heap of machinery on the floor. Sam immediately started examining the equipment while Cam motioned over one of the Marine escorts and took the man's P90 and handgun, sending him to fetch more weapons for the rest of SG-1.

"~I don't know what to say, Colonel Mitchell. According to my sensors, and the information returned from the stasis chamber to my enquiries, all the chambers in that room are empty and drawing no power.~" Selenis finally replied. "~My logs confirm no change in readings from this room since the last Alteran left this facility.~" Sam glanced up at him.

"~She's right, Cam,~" Sam was officially in cahoots with Vala in genderising the base, "~the sensors and command relays to this chamber have been by-passed by _this_,~" she held up a small box with a simple display on the top and several connections leading from it to the chamber and the other machinery on the floor, "~it's getting power from these puddle jumper power cells,~" she pointed at the largest bits of machinery, connected together in a complicated arrangement, "~effectively it's been spliced out of Selenis' control.~"

"~You should step away from it, Mitchell, we don't want history repeating itself.~" Daniel teased him and he glared at the man in return.

"~I learn from my mistakes, Jackson, no more waking up the spawn of Anubis for me.~" he retorted. "~When can we expect Rip van Winkle to wake up?~" he asked Sam, she glanced down at the jumper fuel cell and read off some numbers on the display.

"~There is plenty of power in these fuel cells,~" she replied, "~we don't have to worry about that.~" As if to spite her the chamber beeped and hummed and a countdown started on its display. "Crap. That wasn't me!" she cried, crouching down by the machinery. "~There must have been some sort of proximity sensor to auto-activate the thawing procedure if someone approached the chamber and stayed close for long enough.~" The engineer who had led the search party spluttered a half-hearted protest, but Sam smiled at him. "~You couldn't have known, Dr. Jasper.~"

"~Sam, get back to command, I want internal sensors and video under constant monitoring.~" Sam nodded and hustled the scientists and engineers present out of the room. "Teal'c, take the Marines with you and coordinate with Captain Wells. I want you and a team defending the Chair Room, and teams at the primary and secondary power junctions." He motioned another Marine over to grab his weapons, he handed the P-90 to Vala and the handgun to Daniel. Teal'c took the Marine and left the room.

"Cameron, don't you think this is a bit excessive?" Daniel stuck the gun in the back of his belt as Cam and Vala checked over their P90s. "The chair doesn't even work without the control crystal."

"Knowing our luck, Jackson, this guy's gonna wake up pissed and will take it out on us. I want to be prepared. Selenis says he's been here since before the last Alteran left, which means _he_ didn't want to leave. He even put a fail-safe on his chamber." He pointed at the machinery on the floor. "Does that look like he wanted to be found and woken by someone else?" Daniel looked at the jumper fuel cells for a while and mulled over Cam's words.

"He's right, Daniel. Our luck in these situations is awful." Vala rubbed his arm gently. "Still, being cautious doesn't mean we won't be polite. That's why you're here. Right, Cameron?"

"Absolutely, Vala." Cam clutched his P90 and pointed it down at the ground in a ready stance while they watched the chamber in front of them slowly release its grip on time. "Jackson speaks softly, and we carry the big sticks." The countdown proceeded apace and soon a shaky Alteran man stumbled out of the chamber, breathing heavily for a few moments and looking between each of them in turn, frowning warily. "Welcome to the future, friend." The man's eyes narrowed further.

"He's from millions of years in the past, Mitchell, he has no idea what English is." Daniel said in exasperation before turning to face the Alteran. "~Greetings, friend, we are peaceful explorers who have recently discovered this Alteran facility. It is an honour to meet- ~" Before Daniel could finish the sentence the man's features turned into one of disgust and he was rushing the archaeologist, slamming a closed palm into Daniel's solar plexus and driving him back against the wall to slump down to the ground, insensible. Cam and Vala both raised their P90s, but the Alteran was already on the move past them, sweeping a leg around under Vala and kicking her down to the ground and shoulder barging past Cam when he was forced to lower his gun as the other's movements brought Vala into his firing line. The Alteran ran for the door and disappeared into the corridor before Cam could draw a bead on him again. He cursed and pressed the button on his comm.

"Code Red! We have an intruder on base!" He helped Vala back to her feet and she rushed to check on Daniel. "Medics to Dr. Jackson's location immediately!"

"Cam, what happened?" asked Sam incredulously over the comm. He motioned for Vala to stay with Daniel, knowing she would anyway, and began chasing after the other man.

"I think this guy is the original saboteur, Sam." he replied grimly. "~Selenis, have you got this guy on sensors?~"

"~I tracked him down your tier, travelling to a transporter which he took to tier six, treblin side.~" Cam smirked at the phrase.

"~I really wish you wouldn't indulge his foibles like that, Selenis.~" Sam huffed in exasperation. Cam and Vala had arranged for the right side of the base when facing the Supergate to be termed hamman side with the opposite side being treblin side. Selenis had been happy to oblige.

"~It makes Vala giggle, Dr. Carter.~" Cam snorted at the reply, obviously the AI didn't feel it needed a reason beyond that. Vala's giggle over the radio was matched by the sincerity in her voice.

"~Thank you, Selenis.~" she said. "~Medics say Daniel is okay, just a bump on the head and a big bruise on his middle.~"

"~Good news, Vala.~" Cam said as he smacked the control panel to go to a transporter on tier six on the opposite wing of the base. "~Sam, what is on tier six, treblin?~"

"~Auxiliary control room two.~" she breathed in alarm. Cam cursed and hurried out of the transporter.

"~Colonel Mitchell, Dr. Carter, the intruder is severing command and control relays to that section of tier six.~" Cam rushed on with another curse.

"~What's he doing?~" he asked desperately.

"~Video feed in AuxCon is still operational. He pulled a crystal out of his jacket and inserted it into the control console, zoom in please, Selenis, he's programming it. Holy Hannah, Cameron! That's a control chair interface crystal! He must have taken it with him into stasis! You can't let him use that! If he decides to take Selenis out of orbit it will cause catastrophic damage on Terra!~" she cried and Cam rounded the corner leading to Auxiliary Control. He raised his P90 and moved on towards the room, sliding towards the doorway. Before he could react a hand snaked out of the darkness and grabbed the underside of his P90, twisting it and pulling, Cam didn't lose his grip until a fist smashed into his face for the third time. He grabbed the Beretta in his belt and a hand gripped his wrist, twisting it with far greater than normal human strength, causing him to lose the pistol as his fingers went numb. Definitely an Alteran. He was spun around and the back of his knees kicked out from under him and his arm was pinned behind his back. He saw his P90 held out in front of him by the Alteran saboteur behind him. The weapon was turned over and examined.

"~Solid metal projectiles, a mass driver? No, there is no power pack, no electromagnetic rails or coils. Chemical propulsion? How primitive.~" The voice dripped with disdain, the hand holding the P90 shook and the gun was thrown away to slide across the floor, his Beretta was kicked away to join it.

"~Works well against Replicators and idiots who only worry about energy weapons. We use rail guns on our ships as well.~" Cam taunted and received a twist on his wrist in return.

"~You are weak, savage.~" The saboteur slammed an elbow into Cam's back and sent him sprawling to the ground, by the time he could move again the Alteran was long gone. He turned over onto his back and groaned.

"Cam! Are you okay?" Sam cried in concern.

"Yeah, Sam, I'm okay. Saboteur is on the move." He shook out his aching wrist and opened and closed the fingers.

"~Cam, he can't be allowed to take control of the chair room with that crystal. We'll lose control of the base.~" She was calming down again, speaking in Alteran. He turned his head to look down at his left hand and lifted the crystal he was holding up to his face.

"Nope, can't have that." he smiled and chuckled before groaning in pain again.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Chapter 8**

Groom Lake, Nevada, February 2003

Sam gave the ground tech the thumbs up after he slapped the top of her helmet, and watched him do the same with Cam in the first seat before backing off and pulling the gantry away. Cam made a few checks and called out several systems which she also signed off on before flicking a switch to slide the canopy closed over them. After getting a thumbs up from the ground staff he began to roll the X-302 out of the hangar and into the crisp desert morning. Cam lifted his facemask up over his mouth.

"Tower, this is Ghost Rider, checks complete, over." he said as he brought the fighter to a temporary stop, just outside the hangar doors as they closed. It was a formality as they only ever used the one runway, but a formality which was always observed.

"Roger that, Ghost Rider, proceed to runway two-niner for cleared take-off. Show her what her baby can _really_ do." Sam smiled softly at the reply from the tower. She'd taken the 302 up herself a few times, but she was also feeling a little excited by the prospect of seeing how Cam flew her 'baby'.

"Copy that, Tower," Cam chuckled himself as he taxied on to the runway and performed some final checks, "ready for take-off." He glanced over his shoulder at her and winked.

"Confirmed, Ghost Rider, you have a go." As soon as the radio chirped the confirmation Cam was pushing the throttle smoothly up to maximum.

"That's what I'm talking about. Let's do this, Sam." Pulling back on the yoke, he already had the prototype aircraft buzzing through the Nevada desert at over Mach 1.5 before she had a chance to glance down at the instrument board in front of her. She had felt the acceleration through the inertial dampeners, Cam wasn't messing around. He banked left, heading for the rocky hills in the distance. A little warning light lit up on her display and she looked down to see outgoing comms were off.

"Cam? Why'd you kill the radio?" Her confusion only increased when he laughed out loud and reached under his board. The low strains of an electric guitar started up over the speakers and she blinked in surprise.

"Ain't a joyride without some driving tunes played far too loud, Sam!" As the drums came in she started to recognise the song as something he'd played for her before. She had to admit Cam's taste in guitar rock was pretty good. Then he started singing along and she laughed.

"Oh God, Cam? Really?" He just glanced over his shoulder and grinned at her, while doing Mach 2 in a dive towards the desert scrub. They arrived in the rocky foothills just as the tempo of the song increased and Cam pulled level at one hundred feet. He proceeded to juke left and right following the course of the valley between two ridges, dropping lower as he went, until he got to the first chorus at which point he flipped the 302 upside down and brought it down to fly over the stream, with the water rushing past overhead only ten feet away.

"IF I GO CRAZY, THEN WILL YOU STILL CALL ME SUPERMAN?" He sang at the top of his lungs and Sam was gripping the console in front of her thinking that he quite possibly had gone crazy. She looked up and saw her broken reflection in the water. "Something I learned watching TV in Japan!" He laughed and she felt the bump of the manoeuvring thrusters pushing the 302 a little further from the water before pulling out in an inverted negative gee climb and over one side of the ridge in a roll which had the tops of jagged boulders flying past the canopy over her head. She'd never rated the reaction control thrusters for use in an atmosphere!

"Cam, you just used the RCS!" her fingers flew over the console ahead of her as she brought up data logs and quickly skimmed the telemetry, her eyes widening in amazement.

"Course I did, darlin', have been this whole time." He continued singing the second verse, doing an Immelman turn which caused her board to light up showing the lower fore and upper aft thrusters firing, pitching the craft far more steeply than she'd ever thought possible when writing the design specs. He again turned into a dive and brought the 302 to nap of the earth flight, rolling it up onto a wing so she could see the ground rush by just past the tip of the wing as he pulled back on the yoke and took them in a long banking turn, she watched the massive dust stream pulled up by their passage, trailing off behind them in a funnel shaped vortex. She checked the air speed indicator with a glance because she could tell they were still accelerating and, incredibly, felt him kick in the ramjets while he was rolling over to fly inverted once more. Mach 3 at twenty feet above the ground, while flying upside down, all the while singing his head off. He kicked the nose down, sending the 302 into another negative gee climb, this time to the thumping of the ramjet behind her seat. She grinned despite herself. The song had started over again and this time she joined in. She sang in her mezzo while his baritone accompanied her, trading off parts of the chorus until both of them sang the last line.

"If I go crazy..." he began.

"Then I'll still call you Superman!" she finished.

"If I'm alive and well..." he continued.

"I'll be there, holding your hand!" she replied.

"I'll keep you by my side with my super-human might... Kryptonite!" They sang together, both smiling as the guitars and drums seemed to match the pace of the engines.

He was in a steep climb now, the ramjets powering them up past Mach 6 almost vertically into the high atmosphere before he switched over to the sublight thrusters just when the air started getting too thin. The sky darkening from bright blue into navy into black, the stars flickering on one by one. It took her by surprise how well he'd timed it. The song tapered off, the distorted hum of the last chord falling silent just as they reached low orbit, leaving her staring into the depths of space at the stillness of the starlight, broken only several minutes later by Cam's soft voice. His words caused something inside her chest to snap into place, filling her with a rush of feeling which nearly overwhelmed her.

"Look, Sam, we're astronauts." She'd been in space so many times already, but it wasn't until he said it, as she looked at the stars with him, that she truly believed it, deep in the depths of her soul.

* * *

Lucian Alliance Outpost, July 2010

Cam looked at the pyramid through his binoculars and had members of his assault teams paint the static gun emplacements with laser targets. Behind him, Teal'c was already assembling fireteams for specific roles. Daniel was looking through another set of binoculars at the pyramid, trying to figure out if he could ascertain anything about its possible layout from markings. Vala was tying her hair up in a ponytail to get it out of the way before checking her and Daniel's grenades.

"Sam, the Lucian Alliance has a lot of people in this place. We're gonna need those 302s to waste these turrets before we move out of cover." he said into his comm. "I'm counting eight gun emplacements around this entrance, two of them AA, which are painted. They are loaded for bear."

"Copy that, Cam. 302s are on their way, ETA from orbit is thirty seconds, three zero." Her voice just reminded him that she wasn't here. She was still watching his six, he just wished it wasn't from so far away. He hunkered down for the wait.

"You know I'd feel better with you here with us, Sam. Vala is handy with a gun, but it's still fifty-fifty that she'll stop shooting if she spots something shiny." He chuckled as Vala slapped his arm.

"I wish I were down there too, Cam. I've got your back though, I've got all of your backs, keep in touch." she signed off and he glared at Daniel until the man looked at him, then raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"There are some inscriptions by the entrance, they mention Ra, this may have been one of his planets." Daniel returned his binoculars to one of the pockets of his tac vest. "I don't think this pyramid will be similar to the one on Abydos however, it's smaller, much smaller."

"That's fine, Jackson, it was a long shot anyway." He looked between his two teammates. "You both good to go?" They nodded and he raised his Heckler & Koch G36K, checking the C-Mag drum again. "Teal'c, we are going as soon as the 302s get here. We all set?"

"Indeed, Colonel Mitchell. All teams are ready." The Jaffa came to crouch beside his teammates, looping the sling on his M60E3 over his head. As if in response to Teal'c's words, they all looked up at the keening sound of incoming fighters and the scream of air-to-ground missiles closing in.

"Laser teams, switch to the static guns as soon as the AA goes up! All teams move on my mark!" Cam barked his orders, while the distant figures of Lucian Alliance mercenaries ran around the compound, firing the odd burst of light weapons fire into the sky at fighters too distant to hit. The AA guns went up in a pair of fireballs which lit up the darkening sky and then more fighters screamed in, targeting the anti-personnel emplacements with missiles and rail gun fire. "Move! Move! Move!" Forty men and women of the USAF and USMC descended upon the pyramid and out buildings surrounding the complex, firing on the run and taking cover behind the walls and structures in their path. They worked their way deeper into the complex, encountering heavy resistance at every step. F302s rained down fire against the static gun emplacements until one by one they were silenced, then began laying down suppressing fire on the largest concentrations of Alliance mercenaries.

Fighting their way to the entrance, Cam and his team flanked the dark passageway into the large structure and he took a flashbang from his belt. Daniel on the other side of the entrance did the same and they staggered their release for a one-two punch as they threw the incendiaries inside, rushing in after they exploded. Finding a few disoriented stragglers at the end of the short corridor inside the main pyramid they quickly knocked them out with their weapons and took up positions behind cover while laying down suppressing fire. Two other teams had followed them inside and were taking turns covering their movements through the galleries filled with low walls and thick stone columns. They reached a central room and saw the Stargate, shimmering with an active wormhole as men streamed into it. Cam opened up on them with his G36 which caused them to turn his way and find cover. The two sides exchanged fire for several moments, Teal'c raking the opposite end of the room with his M60 several times as the Alliance soldiers struggled to fire back at him. However the whole structure was beginning to shake, causing dust and loosened blocks of stone to begin falling from above them. Cam didn't like it, remembering the last time a planet with a naquadria core had been used to dial Destiny. As if in answer to his ruminations his comm chirped with Sam's strained voice.

"SG teams, abort! I repeat, abort! The planet's core is about to go critical. Get out of shielded areas right now!" Cam cursed and waved his hand over his head in a signal to all the teams in sight. He pressed the button on his comm.

"You all heard the lady! Fall back to the extraction point on the double! Move! Move! Move! SG-1 will provide cover for teams inside, 302s will cover teams outside." He rose from behind cover and opened up on the opposing forces, with Teal'c and Vala joining in. Daniel threw a smoke grenade over into the midst of the mercenaries and opened up himself. As Cam crouched down and saw all the teams on their way out he signalled his team to follow suit before yelling from behind the wall he crouched behind. "Lucian Alliance personnel! We are leaving! This planet is about to explode! I suggest you lay down your weapons and follow us. We will beam you up if we can!" He received a hail of bullets in response and rolled his eyes, running towards the exit while Teal'c covered him from the doorway. They quickly made their way back out of the pyramid and down the long ramp where he could see a few teams already being beamed up while others provided overwatch support. He pressed his comm stud to speak with the ship in orbit. "Hammond, this is Mitchell. Wait until the last moment to beam me, and gather up any Lucian Alliance personnel I tag." He received a wary 'affirmative' from Sam as he reached for the pack on Vala's back and dug into it for the locator tag patches he had been hoping to use on any prisoners. As he ripped the bag open containing them he spun around when he saw all the SG personnel around him raise their rifles as one and aim at the door.

He saw them come from the pyramid in groups of three and four, most were already unarmed, those that weren't quickly dropped their weapons at the sight greeting them outside. The landscape heaved under their feet, fissures opened up in the ground in the near distance. A jet of streaming molten rock erupted from the other side of the pyramid from somewhere inside the ravine the pyramid was perched on, even as the edges of the cliff subsided and fell into the widening chasm. As each small group passed him he slapped a patch on one of them and told them to hold onto each other, and watched as they vanished. Within thirty seconds they'd seen fifty or so Lucian Alliance mercenaries come from the temple, with a few more making their way down the ramp. Only SG-1 was left on the ground from the SG teams and the entire landscape was turning hellish. They were running out of time. A woman was running down the ramp as fast as she could, she was dressed like one of their scientists, he threw away the bag of locators and stretched his arm out as far as he could, beckoning her onwards, just as Sam's voice came over the comm to him.

"We are out of time, Cam, sorry!" With that he saw the white flash of the Asgard beam enveloping him as the woman leapt at him, leaving him tumbling to the floor of the cargo bay of the Tau'ri battlecruiser, with a flushed and winded woman clutching at him as he felt the ship transition into hyperspace.

"You okay?" he asked softly and she nodded and slowly rolled off from on top of him as she stared down the barrels of his team's guns. He stood up and backed away from the Lucian Alliance mercenaries and scientists eyeing him warily, enclosed on three sides by forcefield projectors and on the fourth by a wall of armed soldiers.

"You're all safe." He told them as he backed up far enough for the forcefield to flash into existence in front of him. "I'm sorry we couldn't save more of you. Any of you who are injured will receive treatment." He turned away and walked out the door. They didn't want any more of his sympathy and he had none more to give. It was time for him to find out how much he'd lost. Each team leader found him in the corridor, recounting their actions and listing their losses, six in total. He nodded to each and dismissed them, allowing them to rejoin their teams in the infirmary, which is where he signalled his friends to head off to when Sam came around the corner to find him. He fell into step alongside her and briefed her on the assault while she briefed him on what had happened in orbit. They walked together into the elevator and waited until the doors closed before embracing each other tightly and kissing. She sighed and pushed her head into his neck, grabbing the back of his desert camouflage BDU jacket.

"We couldn't get a beam lock on the last two pilots, Cam." She leant heavily against him and he stroked her hair. "They'd both taken hits and there was too much interference being caused by the damaged systems." His lips drew down into a thin line as he nodded in understanding, not needing to say anything. She already knew he understood. And he knew she understood as well, when he rested his forehead against her shoulder and closed his eyes while she rubbed the small of his back. He opened them again only when the elevator deposited them on the short corridor leading to the bridge, and the waiting subspace communication with General O'Neill at Homeworld Command.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 674 days relative

Cam sighed as he saw Vala come around the corridor ahead of him on her skates, grinning at him. He slowed down his pace then stopped and pushed against the wall, stretching his legs and back while cooling down. He could tell she wasn't going to leave him alone until she said what she wanted to say. She skated around him in a small semi-circle and made a little pirouette before coming to a stop with her back against the wall next to him.

"Fancy meeting you here, Cameron, running... in the corridors... in the morning." She gave him her best fake-innocent smile and he chuckled in spite of himself.

"Yeah, fancy that, Vala." He lifted his fingers to his neck and checked his watch while she looked on impassively, waiting for him to drop his hands again to his side.

"I won't keep you long, I know how you like to run past the Core room in the mornings," she grinned evilly at him and he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her, "I just want to say I think you should tell her. Sooner rather than later." He frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off with a raised hand. "Just forget about the frat regs and tell her. We're stuck here, Cameron, and it's been nearly two years, and you are running _far _too much." She leaned her head back against the bulkhead and the look she gave him was filled with sadness and concern. "You both deserve to be happy." He looked away and closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out before speaking.

"I appreciate what you're saying, Vala," he looked into her eyes as she was about to interrupt, "I _really_ do," she remained silent, "but it's not that simple." She gave him a withering glance before placing her hands on both his shoulders.

"I think it is _just_ that simple, Cameron." She patted his cheek and started skating away. "The problem with you Tau'ri males is you _think_ too much." she called out over her shoulder. "Intriguing, if limited, gene pool!" He glared at her barb as she disappeared around a corner. Shaking his head, he turned and began jogging in the direction of the Core room once more.

* * *

Selenis, Luna, August 2010

Sam shook her head and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she watched the video feed on the holographic display in front of her. Cam twirled the control crystal between his fingers as he lay prone on the ground outside the Auxiliary Control room. Where the Hell did he learn to do that? She remembered Teal'c telling her that he'd swiped a control crystal from Volnek in the middle of a fight a few years ago. She wondered exactly what he got up to as he grew up in Kansas. Surely he didn't learn that at the Academy.

"Samantha? Daniel and I are heading for Command. The idiot wants to help." Vala muttered in frustration over the radio. Sam smiled as Daniel told her to shut it.

"Of course, Vala, see you soon." She turned back to the console.

"~I have identified your assailant, Colonel Mitchell.~" Selenis brought up a personnel file for Sam to look at over an ancillary console. "~He is a mechanical systems technician who worked on my construction. His name is Saronus.~"

"~He doesn't move like a mechanical systems technician, Selenis, he moves like a commando.~" Cameron said while getting up onto one knee and slipping the control crystal into his jacket. "Teal'c, look for this guy to be on his way to you. He's fast, strong and smart."

"Understood, Colonel Mitchell. We are prepared." declared the Jaffa. Sam went to a second console and queued it up for video surveillance and was going to have Selenis lock it on to Saronus, except the Alteran wasn't anywhere on the facility's sensors.

"~Selenis...~" she started in a concerned tone.

"~I have noticed it also, Dr. Carter.~" replied the AI as Sam worked over the console trying to review previous footage.

"~Noticed what? Sam? Where's Saronus?~" Cam asked as he got up and collected his weapons. He began jogging back towards a transporter and the camera switched to one further up the corridor.

"~Saronus has disappeared, Cameron. He's nowhere on sensors.~" Sam replied.

"~It is likely he is using the access tunnels and shafts built into my structure, most of them are not covered by the sensor network.~" Selenis posited and Cam cursed. "~Colonel, the Chair Room has an access tunnel entrance inside.~" More curses greeted her over the radio and Sam smiled grimly. Cam reached the transporter and keyed in the one closest to the Chair Room.

"I should have asked for a life signs detector." he muttered. "Wait for me, T-man. Almost there." Cam was running down the corridor, but a flash from her console alerted her to what was happening first.

"Cam, Teal'c, he's sealing the Chair Room from somewhere!" Teal'c and most of the Marines were waiting for Cameron outside the room, one unlucky man stood just inside the doorway as the door slid shut behind him while he faced the interior of the room with his weapon raised.

"Corporal Danning!" cried Teal'c banging on the door as the camera following Cam switched to the one outside the chair room. "What is happening?" Saronus' name popped up on the sensor list again and Sam quickly had the second monitor tracking him. He was inside the Chair Room and already moving in on Danning, who was firing at the man with his P90 and not hitting anything. A flash of the hand had something flying from Saronus' grip and slamming into the side of Danning's helmet, stunning him long enough for Saronus to close the distance and elbow him in the back of the neck, taking him down with a single blow. Sam was amazed at the precision and brutality. Life signs on Danning were still strong, small mercies.

"~Saronus!~" Cam yelled from behind the closed door. He reached into his jacket and produced the control crystal, pressing it to the clear glass for Saronus to see. The Alteran looked surprised and incensed, patting down his pockets he rounded on Cam who taunted him with a wicked smile. "~Looking for this?~" He slipped the crystal back into his jacket. "~How about we talk, huh? Get to know each other? We could still come to some mutual understanding. You know, like _civilised_ people.~" Sam winced, perhaps that wasn't the wisest thing Cam could have said, but she could tell by his grin it was getting exactly the reaction he wanted. The saboteur spun around and headed straight for the door and away from Danning, who was crawling slowly to the other side of the room under his own power.

"~Do not speak my name! Do not use my language! You have no right, savage!~" The outburst was telling, Saronus was young by Alteran standards, and obviously highly volatile.

"~You could always learn English.~" Cam shrugged with a smile. Saronus grimaced, the corner of his mouth twinging further down for an instant.

"~I would not defile my tongue with your crude speech.~" He paced towards the door and stood before it. "~You will place the crystal on the ground and move away down the corridor.~" Cam scratched his chin for a moment.

"~Uh, no. I think I'm going to destroy it with the unstable vortex of the Stargate actually.~" With that he walked off and motioned for Teal'c to remain. The Jaffa did so, staring impassively at the bristling Alteran through the glass door. Saronus spun on his heel and headed straight for the back wall of the Chair Room.

"Colonel Mitchell, Saronus is leaving via the access tunnel." Teal'c said into his comm. "I suspect he intends to ambush you. Samantha Carter, I would be grateful for your assistance in opening these doors." Sam immediately set about rerouting command and control functions for the room to unlock it, and called medics to the Chair Room to help the stricken Marine. Not long after succeeding she spotted Cam striding in from the treblin side corridor, she pressed a few controls on the side of the console and a small tray slid out revealing a crystal which she lifted and flung over the balcony for him to catch without breaking stride. She was a little scared at how easily she was able to follow his crazy way of thinking now. Vala and Daniel entered the 'gate room from the hamman side corridor and Sam cursed. Vala was supporting the still wobbly archaeologist, this couldn't get any worse. Sure enough, Saronus appeared out of nowhere behind the pair and slammed an elbow into Daniel's kidney, then spun and kicked him clear of the startled Vala. Cam was raising his P90, but Saronus took the raven-haired thief by the throat and slipped in behind her, ripping her gun from her grasp and throwing it away.

"~Give me the crystal!~" yelled the saboteur while shaking Vala by the neck, his thumb and forefinger pressing on either side of her larynx. "~Give it to me or I will kill her.~" He held his free arm out, his fingers beckoning.

"~I'm not an idiot, Saronus. You won't kill her, if you did, I'd kill you, and I can't help but notice you've been very careful so far not to kill anyone. You've lost.~" Without taking his eyes off the man he was aiming at he flicked on the laser sight of his P90 and focused it right on Saronus' forehead. "~Sam, dial the 'gate to somewhere nasty.~" She checked over her memory of hellish planets and their 'gate addresses and dialled one up, swiftly lighting up the glyphs on Selenis' uniquely styled Stargate, before it finished the sequence Cam casually tossed the blank crystal she'd thrown to him earlier over his shoulder and the kawoosh hit it perfectly in mid-flight, obliterating it. Saronus cried out in fury and Vala was going slightly red in the face. "~Give it up, Saronus.~" The saboteur's features twisted into one of hatred and disgust.

"~I demand you leave this base at once, savage!~" he growled, inching forward as Cam signalled for the 'gate to be shut down and Sam obliged.

"~You have no authority here, Saronus.~" Everyone looked up in surprise at the AI's statement. Sam blinked as she saw the console next to her flicker on and the subspace communications console beyond it flash an acknowledgement. Her display began streaming realtime telemetry and she nearly shuddered visibly when realisation dawned on her. She quickly began inputting various searches while Selenis and Cam kept Saronus' attention down in the 'gateroom.

"~What do you mean, Selenis? I am Alteran, we built you!~" cried the man indignantly.

"~No you're not.~" said Cam with a dismissive tilt to his head. Saronus rounded on him perplexed. "~You're not Alteran, you're Indesta.~" the Indesta's eyes widened in surprise. "~You destroyed the legacy of the Alterans, you betrayed their trust and their hopes for their descendants. You don't get to call yourself Alteran.~"

"~Pathetic nonsense! Selenis, explain yourself! You must follow my commands.~" The saboteur glared at Cam while still inching forward, the corner of his eye twitching.

"~I am following the last order given to me by Ilemus before he departed for Terra.~" explained the AI. "~To wait in slumber until the next evolution comes to claim me. Colonel Mitchell is my rightful commander as the first human to set foot within this facility, Dr. Carter is his second as the next human to enter the base.~" Sam blinked in surprise, it seemed Teal'c didn't count, being a Jaffa, genetically altered human stock or not. Still, Selenis felt Cam was her commander? What did that mean?

"The IOA isn't going to like this, Cameron." she muttered from the balcony as a list of results began ordering itself on the screen.

"You're telling me?" Cam chuckled without glancing her way.

"~That is ludicrous! I demand- ~" The Indesta never got to finish his thought.

"~I will allow you to leave unharmed, Saronus.~" Selenis interrupted.

"Selenis? Sam?" called Cam in confusion. Daniel was stirring over by the ramp to the jumper bay, shaking his head groggily.

"~What? I will not leave! This is Alteran property!~" ranted the saboteur.

"~Not anymore, Saronus. I am property of the Tau'ri.~" Selenis declared. "~I will allow you to depart, to a safe location of my choosing. No one will follow you through the Stargate.~"

"No way!" cried Daniel as he reached for Vala's P90 and raised it against his shoulder from a kneeling position, Teal'c arrived just then and his Marines also raised their weapons at the Indesta who swung to keep Vala between him and the weapons pointed at him. "~Selenis, we cannot let him leave! And definitely not with Vala!~"

"Cameron." Sam called calmly and he looked up at her that time, meeting her gaze for several moments and drawing his mouth into a thin line. He tilted his head to the side and she nodded once lightly, crossing her arms over her chest. He turned back to face Saronus and lowered the barrel of his P90.

"Stand down, Marines." he said and backed up to give the saboteur a clear path to the 'gate. The Marines dropped their guns slightly, but not all the way. The Indesta still didn't seem like he was interested.

"NO! Sam... Mitchell, we can't!" Daniel was shaking, the P90 he held drifting unsteadily in his grip. "Teal'c! Tell them!" He turned towards Vala and looked at her in dismay. Vala was trying to shake her head, but Saronus held her throat in a vice-like grip. "Vala!" He tried to get up and Teal'c came to stand by him, supporting him and taking the gun from him.

"Colonel Mitchell?" The Jaffa looked at Cam in concern, Cam nodded imperceptibly and he lowered the weapon, the Marines following suit.

"NO!" Daniel tried to step forward, but Teal'c held on to him.

"~You'd better leave, Saronus, Teal'c might not be able to hold on to the philologist for much longer.~" Cam smirked at Teal'c's raised eyebrow. "~You've lost, let Vala go and leave, we won't follow you.~"

"~If you are choosing the destination then I will take her with me.~" He gave them all an ugly smile and the muscles in his neck tensed noticeably. "~Then I will let her go, it is safe after all, isn't it?~" The 'gate opened behind him. "~Where are you sending me, Selenis?~"

"~It doesn't matter,~" said Sam snidely from the balcony, "~you won't be there long, will you?~" Saronus glared at her.

"~No, and I will make sure you cannot follow me.~" He began walking backwards towards the 'gate. "~Mark my words, 'Tau'ri', I will return. With the power of my people behind me.~" They ignored him, each of them watched Vala, the fear and distress shining in her eyes.

"We'll see you soon, Vala." Sam said softly. "I promise." The raven-haired woman looked up at her and she tried to convey her confidence to her friend. "You're going to be my maid-of-honour, right?" Vala's eyes were brimming with tears and she nodded slightly. Saronus pulled her backwards into the event horizon while her eyes flicked to lock on Daniel's.

"VALA!" He broke free from Teal'c's grasp when the wormhole disengaged and lunged at Cameron, landing a punch to his jaw. Sam started in dismay and began running down the stairs, finding her friend yelling at the top of his lungs at the empty Stargate as Cam held him up and gripped the back of his head in consolation. She locked eyes with her love and there were questions there, but no doubts.


	9. Epilogue

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

**Under the Silent Stars – Epilogue**

Stargate Command, July 2010

Sam looked up from her laptop and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she heard Cam's footsteps out in the hall. She smiled as he flashed a grin her way when he sauntered in to the room and came to stand beside her. He leaned down, lifted her chin with a finger and kissed her gently, when he pulled away he let his hand run along her jaw and through her long sandy brown hair.

"Morning, Dr. Carter." he murmured softly in that drawl which was doing very unprofessional things to her at that moment. His smile almost did her in after that.

"Morning, Colonel. Is it time for that meeting?" Sam liked how Cam used her salutation. She loved it when he just called her 'Sam', but when he said 'Doctor' in that way it made her stomach flip.

"Yep, though I have no idea why we need to meet the new British IOA rep," he shrugged with a sigh, "mine is not to reason why." He held out his hand and she took it, closing the lid of her computer as she stood.

"I don't think you'll be asked to 'do and die' for a simple bureaucratic meet-and-greet." She held his hand until they got to the door, then fell into step alongside him in the corridor.

"I wouldn't put it past the IOA." Cam joked with an evil grin. She swatted his arm in mock-dismay as they entered the elevator. "Ready to get back up to Selenis?" She nodded at his question, she'd just been coming up with the personnel short list she was planning to take to General Landry the following day. Just a select handful of scientists and engineers, some already had knowledge of Alteran, all would before they left. "I have to admit I kind of took a liking the place in just the couple of hours we were there. Think it'll have quarters big enough for two?" She smiled at him.

"Are you asking me to move in with you, Cam?" She leaned over for a kiss just before the elevator doors opened on sublevel 27.

"I thought that was kind of implied with the marriage proposal and all." He grinned and let her walk out first then fell into step beside her once more. "You did say 'yes', remember?"

"I'll never forget." She bumped his shoulder with hers as they neared Landry's office. "To answer your question, if Selenis does have large enough quarters, I'm not letting you sleep anywhere, but at my side."

"Now that's what I'm talking about." He clapped his hands and rubbed them together and she laughed, knocking on the General's open door and walking in when he smiled at them. Cam still came to attention until Landry said a quick 'at ease, Mitchell' and turned to introduce the two diplomats already in the room. One was a middle aged woman, dressed severely in a grey suit which emphasized her imposing height and thin features. The other was a surprisingly elderly man, white hair slicked back, pencil thin moustache still grey and creasing into a frown at the sight of them. He scrutinised Cam especially, from his seat by the General's desk. Sam raised an eyebrow and glanced at Cameron to find him similarly scrutinising the old man, whose wizened hands clutched at the top of an ornately decorated cane.

"Dr. Carter, Colonel Mitchell, I'd like you to meet the new British delegate from the IOA, Dr. Angela Kirkpatrick." He motioned to the lady and Sam shook her hand with a smile, Cam following suit before quickly returning his gaze to the elderly man. "And this is a representative of Her Majesty's Government, Air Commodore The Lord Edward Hillingdale of Ashleyhay. He's here as an official observer for the Ministry of Defense." The old man stood up, revealing himself to be quite spry for his obviously advanced years. He bowed slightly over Sam's hand, but when he took Cam's he paused. They both did, staring into each other's faces.

"Group Captain Carter?" asked the elderly man in a halting voice.

"Is that you, Hodgkins?" Cam grinned brightly. "You got _old_, kid!" He pumped the man's hand enthusiastically and a slow grin spread over the British diplomat's face as he reciprocated. Sam's eyes widened in surprise, as did General Landry's. Angela Kirkpatrick looked scandalised for her part.

"Yes, sir," Lord Hillingdale laughed jovially and rested his hand on Cam's shoulder. "that's what comes of living eighty-eight years. You, on the other hand, got _younger_! You lucky dog, sir" the old man laughed heartily and Cam joined in. By this point, Dr. Kirkpatrick had had enough, and raised a hand in front of both men.

"Just what is the meaning of this? Father, how do you know this man?" She nodded towards Cam who turned a scrutinising look at her, narrowing his eyes. Before the old man could reply to his daughter, Cam was snapping his fingers in recognition.

"Little Angie! I bounced you on my knee when you were still an ankle-biter!" He turned to Lord Hillingdale with a questioning look. "When was that? 1955? 1956? I told you I'd come see your kids, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, sir. I was very glad to see you as well. My wife Marjorie was excessively fond of you, do you remember her, sir?" He smiled at Cam's nod. Sam took a hold of Cam's arm and looked between him and the older man.

"Did you two meet in the War?" she asked.

"Yes, indeed. Group Captain Carter was my flight leader, then my squadron leader. He taught me everything I know about flying and made me the man I am today." He smiled at Cam who rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment.

"How can that be, Father? He's clearly half your age and his name is Mitchell, Colonel Cameron Mitchell." Angela Kirkpatrick asked in a desperate voice.

"It's a long story, Dr. Kirkpatrick, I'll make sure you get a copy of the report." said Landry with an amused look at Cameron. "I really might have to arrest you for desertion this time, Mitchell. Joined the RAF, did you?"

"And then got press-ganged into the USAAF in '44, sir." He scratched his cheek with a sheepish smile on his face. Landry shook his head.

"And so the RAF promoted you and the Yanks were forced to give you a Colonel's commission, if I recall correctly, sir." Lord Hillingdale chuckled.

"Aw, don't 'sir' me, Hodgkins, just call me Cam, all my friends do." Cam chuckled as the old man raised his eyebrow at him. "Anyway, you outrank me now, you're an Air Commodore, _and_ a Lord. Now I remember, you took your wife's name since she was a blue blood." Both men chuckled as the older man nodded.

"You will always be my superior officer, sir." The older man demurred and Cam gave a wry smile. "Actually, I was asked to give this to Colonel Cameron Mitchell, the leader of SG-1, by none other than Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, the Chief of the Air Staff." He took an envelope and a slim box from his inside pocket and handed them to Cam. Cam looked at them and handed the box to Sam while he opened the envelope and read the letter inside. Sam opened the box after receiving a small accepting nod from the old man. Inside was a white enameled cross trimmed in gold with a crown encircled by a laurel wreath at its center, it hung from a gold bar attached to a red ribbon bordered in deep blue. She lifted her eyebrows and looked at the old man. She'd seen one of these before on the chest of a heavily decorated British General, it was the Medal of the Distinguished Service Order. She looked at Cam as he laughed nervously, showing her the letter which was an honorary promotion to Air Vice-Marshal, a two-star rank, she stared at it dumbfounded, Lord Hillingdale glanced at it himself and chuckled. "And as you can see, you really still are my superior officer. The orders for these were sent down in 1990 on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Battle of Britain. We contacted the US Air Force, but were told Colonel Daniel Carter passed away in 1972." Sam glanced at Cam sadly. "Now I know why I was asked to come here. I would recognise you." By this time, the British IOA delegate was apoplectic.

"That is enough! What is going on here? What is this madness!" She rounded on all of them collectively after turning from her father's surprised look.

"Time travel." Sam said with an apologetic smile. "With a little Asgard extra-dimensional consciousness storage thrown in." The older woman blinked several times before sitting down heavily in the other seat in Landry's office.

"Is she the one, sir?" Hillingdale was looking at Sam now with a faint glimmer of understanding in his brown eyes.

"Ah, yeah, kid, she is. Sam's my fiancée." Cam looked her way with a very proud smile and she blushed helplessly, then found her hands engulfed between the older man's fingers and she looked over in surprise.

"He loves you a great deal, dear, a _great_ deal." His eyes were brimming and Sam could only smile at him.

"I know, and I love him." she said faintly.

"Please, can we get to the real topic of this meeting? I am far too confused with everything all of you are talking about and I just want to get on with this." Dr. Kirkpatrick looked faintly ill when they turned to look at her in her seat. "Please?"

"Of course, Dr. Kirkpatrick." Landry waved Sam and Cam to order and he helped his old wingman sit down again, patting him on the shoulder before coming to stand by her side. Landry turned to Dr. Kirkpatrick and clasped his hands on his desk before speaking. "It is the official position of the United States Government that Selenis is currently an Air Force facility, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, until we can determine what risks it may pose." Sam looked at Cameron in alarm and he was frowning heavily, they both realised what the meeting was about now.

"General Landry that is unacceptable. To have such a facility in the control of the American military, a facility on _our Moon,_ is beyond the pale. It must be ceded to international control at once!" Her eyes gleamed with fervour.

"Dr. Kirkpatrick, we still know next to nothing about Selenis, except that it could be the key to saving the people stranded on Destiny," all eyes turned to Cam as he spoke softly, "including many IOA personnel." The woman glowered at him. "This is not an exploration mission like the Atlantis Expedition, our priority is research and rescue. _Especially_ now that the Lucian Alliance has a presence aboard Destiny. Dr. Carter has been assigned to lead the mission, she's a civilian-" The older woman cut him off fiercely.

"In name only!" she thundered. "She retired from the Air Force only a week ago, Colonel, and was immediately hired by them as an exclusive consultant. She's only a civilian as a technicality!" Cam bristled and Sam wasn't much less angry than he was, but she laid a restraining hand on his forearm and he looked at her, his eyes aflame.

"Angela," everyone turned to the aged British aristocrat as his soft voice broke the tense stillness, "that was very rude, dearest. She retired so she could get married." He smiled at Sam and she nodded gratefully. "Beyond that, Group Ca-... sorry," he chuckled at Cam as the younger man waved the letter he was holding with raised eyebrows, "Colonel Mitchell's character is beyond reproach. I would put my faith and trust in him completely." He turned to Landry and spoke with finality. "General, it is my considered opinion that as long as Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Carter are in command of Selenis, the best interests of Earth and her people will be completely secure. My own report will clearly reflect this."

"Father!" Dr. Kirkpatrick looked at the old man in disbelief. "We can't just trust the American military with something so vastly important."

"Of course not, dear. I'm trusting Colonel Mitchell with it. I can think of no better man." He turned to Sam with a smile. "And no better woman than she whom he loves."

* * *

P6X-762, April 2821

Cam wondered if Saronus was surprised to see them as the saboteur stepped through the 'gate and turned around to face them. He waved sarcastically and grinned while the Indesta looked around the large room enclosed in metal and glass joined together in acute geometric shapes, which commanded impressive views of the surrounding countryside beyond its walls. He still had his fingers around Vala's throat which made Cam frown and had Teal'c beside him shifting his stance. The wormhole behind him disconnected, revealing Daniel standing on the other side of the Stargate. The archaeologist stepped through the ring, which shimmered and disappeared in a flash of blue-white light after he passed, and put his hand on the saboteur's shoulder, startling him. The man spun around, loosing his grip on Vala, who whirled off to the side clutching at her neck with gasping coughs.

"~Hello again,~ asshole!" Daniel landed a vicious right hook to the man's cheek and sent him sprawling to the polished marble floor, sliding until he stopped against one of the forcefields they had set up in front of them. The fourth side of the enclosure flashed into existence. "~Been waiting eight hundred years to do that.~" Jackson shook out his hand, opening and closing his fist, and reached out to take Vala's elbow and pull her into his arms. "It's going to be okay, Vala, you're safe." She was looking around herself in confusion mixed with fear and fell against Daniel as his arms closed around her. Their Vala bounded around the containment field pylons and stood by Daniel and the Vala who'd come through the 'gate.

"Hey gorgeous! You have no idea how long I've been waiting to say that." She grinned broadly and wrapped her own arms around her counterpart, startling her even further. "Come along with me, it'll be a little while, but we'll get you home as soon as we can." She took the woman in hand with an arm around her waist and led her from the room. Daniel came to stand by Sam, who stood to Cam's right. Saronus rubbed the left side of his face as he eased himself up onto one knee and looked around him. He glared at each of them in confusion, his eyes flicking over to the two identical women leaving through the crystalline doors sliding open behind SG-1, the corner of his mouth twitched.

"~Welcome, Saronus... to the future!~" Cam held his arms out wide and Sam shook her head with a rueful smile. Teal'c looked away for a moment and Daniel heaved a sigh. Cam narrowed his eyes at his teammates. "What?"

"When did you become a ham, Mitchell?" Daniel turned to walk around the side of the containment field while Cam glared at him.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." retorted Cam.

"~What are you talking about?~" asked the Indesta as he stood up, still rubbing his stinging cheek, his fingers stiffened as he touched the tender flesh.

"See? Not even Saronus knows what you're talking about." Cam motioned at the saboteur in triumph and Daniel shook his head and snorted.

"He was talking to you. And remember he can't understand English." He was halfway around a circuit of the containment field, making little spot checks of the pylons. By the time he was done and had walked all the way around to Teal'c's side, Vala had returned, confirming she'd left her time-travelling counterpart with the medics. Cam sighed and turned back to Saronus as Sam took up her explanation.

"~This is the year 2821, by our reckoning.~" Sam said matter-of-factly. "~Selenis opened a wormhole through the magnetic field of a solar flare to send you over eight hundred and ten years into the future.~" Saronus stared at her dumbfounded and blinked a few times.

"~Impossible. You lie.~" His reply made her roll her eyes.

"~We have no reason to lie, Saronus.~" Teal'c's accent had improved a great deal over the centuries.

"~How else could we be at your point of departure and at your destination? ~" asked Daniel.

"~Not to mention, knowing exactly when you'd arrive so we could be here to kick your ass.~" Cam added, Daniel turned to look at him. "~So Jackson could kick your ass.~" The archaeologist smiled and nodded. The Indesta looked between each of them, his eyes gleaming with disdain.

"~You expect me to believe you travelled through time in order to ambush me?~" Saronus' voice was low and dangerous.

"~Aw, Hell no! Time travel is a pain in the ass. We went the long way 'round.~" Cam laughed at Saronus' look of disbelief. "~I really don't care what you believe. Let's just say that being connected to the Deep Core has its... benefits.~" Cam turned and smiled at his wife. Sam smiled and shook her head slightly, flicking it back towards the Indesta. "~We get brought back every once in a while when we're needed. You know the drill. If you have a problem, if no one else can help- ~" Sam covered his mouth with her hand, but it was too late.

"~And if you can find us, maybe you can awaken... SG-1.~" Teal'c finished for him with a slight smile. Sam groaned and let her hand drop. Daniel cringed and Vala grinned.

"~That's right! Say it, T-man, say it!~" Cam pointed at the Jaffa who returned his expectant gaze with a subtle smirk.

"~I will not board your ridiculous aircraft, Cameron Mitchell.~" he said impassively and Cam snapped his fingers several time at the Jaffa. Vala giggled.

"~That's what I'm talking about, right there!~" He clapped Teal'c on the shoulder and his friend bowed slightly to him.

"~I can't believe you just used a pop culture reference from the 1980's.~" breathed Sam incredulously with her face in her hands.

"~In Alteran, no less.~" sighed Daniel in chagrin. He waved his hands dismissively and carried on himself. "~Suffice it to say, we knew where you'd be and when you'd get here, so here we are.~"

"~So now I am at your mercy. What are you going to do? Imprison me? Torture me? Execute me?~" Saronus' words dripped with contempt and Cam frowned angrily, his eyes flashing. Sam laid a hand on his arm which calmed him down slightly.

"~Why would you even think that?~" he asked, his voice low.

"~He doesn't know, Mitchell. He's just come from the past, remember?~" Daniel interjected. Cam shook his head.

"~And? I'm not talking about that. I'm asking why he would even think that in the first place? He knows nothing about us.~" Cam crossed his arms and looked at Saronus in expectation. The man glared at him in disgust.

"~You are scavengers... vermin. Your race steals technologies you have not earned, preying on your betters.~" He turned away from them, clenching his hands into fists, visibly shaking, looking around the open space around him, light streaming in through the glass overhead, forests and mountains visible in the distance beyond the structure they found themselves in.

"~Why do you think we haven't earned it?~" Cam asked calmly. The man whirled on him, eyes ablaze.

"~You think your pathetic species has earned the right to our legacy? To stand on our shoulders? You tell me! You tell me what you did to earn the right to set foot within Selenis!~" he spat at SG-1 while they gazed on dispassionately. Several moments passed before Cam replied.

"~Hmm. We lived for fifty years in a time dilation field, where we learned about nine symbol Stargate addresses, then found a way to not only reverse time inside the field, but also a way to retain our memories of that time- ~" He looked over at Sam when she interrupted him.

"~That was an accident, a fortuitous accident, but an accident nonetheless.~" she interjected. "~The retaining our memories part, not the figuring out how to reverse time in a localised field part. That was all me.~" She grinned and Cam smiled at her.

"~Then we defeated the schemes of a time-travelling would-be galactic hegemon, which led us to the place we could continue our research into the ninth chevron- ~" Cam looked past Daniel to Vala who interrupted him this time.

"~Not to mention, Samantha reverse-engineering a properly functioning dialling computer from the power consumption formulas you guys left behind.~" She smiled at Sam and Cam nodded in acquiescence.

"~I was getting to that.~" he murmured. "~That's just what we did directly to get to Selenis. We had to do some more stuff to get to that point.~" He tapped a finger to his lips as if struggling to remember.

"~We freed the galaxy from oppression and slavery.~" Teal'c offered and Cam snapped his fingers at him.

"~Multiple times.~" Daniel added.

"~Multiple galaxies.~" Sam finished.

"~And each time our opponents had the edge on us in manpower, firepower, resources and technology.~" Cam added.

"~One of those times was the Ori. Remember them? Your piously insane cousins? They kicked you out of your home galaxy.~" Vala taunted the man and he looked at her in disbelief. "~Yeah, we beat them.~"

"~All the while we made allies and helped those we came across who offered us peace. The Asgard, the Nox _and_ the Furlings call us friends.~" Sam's words certainly received a reaction from the man. At the mention of his race's allies his eyes narrowed and he scrutinised her severely.

"~Come on, Sam, they call us the Fifth Race.~" Cam elaborated, which caused the Indesta to whip his head around to him in surprise and alarm. "~That's right Saronus, by the time you met us the Asgard considered us as their peers, albeit young and impetuous, as the Nox would say.~"

"~They entrusted us with their legacy, and the future of their people.~" Sam added with a tilt of her head. "~Then again, I suppose there was something the Asgard noticed which the Indesta failed to consider as a possibility of the next evolution. That they could learn as much from us as we could from them.~" Silence filled the room after she spoke. The members of SG-1 watched the Indesta saboteur quietly while he looked between each of them in turn. Finally shaking his head in dismay.

"~So you tell me, Saronus. What did _you_ do to earn the right to set foot within Selenis? Except being born an Alteran.~" Cam asked matter-of-factly into the lengthening silence.

"~Did you add to the sum of your people's knowledge?~" Sam asked. "~On the shoulders of those who came before you.~"

"~Did you vow to protect their peace at the cost of your own?~" Teal'c enquired.

"~Or did you lie? Did you deceive your fellow Alterans to put yourself in a position to betray their wishes, simply because you disagreed with them?~" Vala asked, looking at him knowingly.

"~It doesn't matter anyway.~" Cam muttered as he reached behind him to retrieve a device from his belt. "~To answer your earlier question, no, we're not going to imprison you, torture you or execute you. We're going to send you home. To your people, the Indesta.~" His fingers flew across the long device and the Stargate reappeared behind Saronus in a flash of light. Another play of his fingers and a wormhole appeared inside the ring, forming without the typical vortex. The Indesta looked behind him suspiciously, staring at the event horizon nestled inside the ring, one side of his face flinching. "~Go on. They're expecting you. They'll be able to help you... with the... thing.~" He waved his finger over his cheek. The forcefield separating Saronus from the Stargate flashed and vanished. The Indesta eyed them all warily, but turned to walk into the Stargate. "~Welcome to your new life, Saronus.~" The wormhole disconnected not long after the Indesta stepped through and the rest of the forcefields created by the pylons flashed and winked out as the pylons lowered themselves into the floor. Sam looped her arm in Cameron's and laid her head on his shoulder.

"You know, maybe I should tell Vala where to find the code for disabling the kawoosh before she leaves." She smiled as Cam began to chuckle.

"And miss seeing the dumbfounded look on your face when you find it in the DHD source code the first time? No way!" He grinned as she swatted his arm.

* * *

Cadet Chapel, US Air Force Academy, August 2010

Sam sat next to Vala on one of the pews with her arm around the former smuggler's shoulder, a hand running down her long black hair. Vala's eyes were screwed shut and she was breathing heavily. Sam glanced over to the altar where Cam, Teal'c and Daniel talked with an Air Force chaplain, glad that they weren't here to make a fuss. She smiled gratefully when Carolyn sat beside her and handed her the glass of water she'd gone to fetch. Sam passed it on to Vala and watched as several sips were taken. Vala had been back for a week now. Two days after she'd passed through the Stargate in Saronus' grip, the 'gate on Selenis activated and the shield which raised automatically dropped just as quickly, allowing Vala to step through to be hurriedly embraced by Daniel and then Sam. Both Cameron and Sam had quickly attempted to reassure Vala they were never going to leave her in the saboteur's clutches. Vala had grinned at them and told them that the sight of them as she stepped through the Stargate on the other end had been all the reassurance she'd ever need. She then told them all about the two weeks she'd spent eight hundred years in the future, as much as she was allowed to see at any rate.

Daniel took a hell of a lot more reassurance at the time of Vala's abduction. Sam had not thought about what having another woman he cared about dragged through a Stargate as a prisoner would do to him. She had to guarantee her friend that Selenis' calculations were pin-point accurate. They would be there to rescue Vala one way or the other. According to Vala when she returned, it didn't even require time-travel. The same procedures discovered to allow the Asgard to return also worked for them. However, for those two days, Daniel refused to have anything to do with Cam and he barely tolerated Sam, even when she explained Cam had been following her lead. It had hurt her to see Cam ignored that way, but he just told her it was fine. That he and Daniel would work it out. Vala's return had made it unnecessary, but it had at least prompted Daniel to apologise for punching him. Now they acted as if it had never happened. Sam shook her head. Men.

"Sorry, Samantha. I'm fine, really." Vala smiled broadly and leaned a little against Sam who smiled reassuringly in return. Vala told them she was fine after she came back, but sometimes she had a small panic attack when something set her off. Now was one of those times.

"I know, Vala. We're here for you anyway." She took the glass from her teammate and handed it to Carolyn who got up to return it from whence she had procured it. "Just remember that on the big day it's _my_ job to have the panic attack and _your_ job to talk me down." Sam smiled and Vala chuckled.

"This place is beautiful, Sam, just the glass and metal reminds me..." Vala paused and Sam nodded taking her hand and squeezing it. "The view is amazing." She looked out the steep triangular window across from their pew and stared into the forest and mountains in the distance. "This is where you had all your military training? Where you and Cameron met? For the second time." Vala smiled at the private joke and Sam nodded as an answer to both her questions. "And now you plan to get married here?" Sam smiled warmly as she looked towards her fiancé.

"Yes." she replied simply and Vala looped an arm through Sam's.

"And you're sure you want me to be your maid-of-honour?" she asked. "I've watched a lot of TV shows now and I don't know if I want to have to fight off all the single men who will attend. I have my Daniel, you know." Sam laughed softly. "Also the last few times I have taken part in a religious ceremony have been with ulterior motives."

"You don't have any now, do you? You can't have Cam!" Sam joked and chuckled at Vala's mock-horrified look. The raven-haired woman turned away from Sam.

"I'll not do it now." she said softly.

"Oh, please, Vala?" Sam was answered with a shake of the former smuggler's head. "Please, Vala, you must be my maid-of-honour." Vala rolled her eyes at her. "Help me, Vala, you are my only hope." Vala took in a very deep breath before letting it out slowly.

"My bosom heaves with indifference, Samantha." Vala said dispassionately and Sam burst out laughing, clapping a hand over her mouth as the few people in the Chapel turned to look at her in shock. She looked around, while trying to contain herself and caught Cam's smile. Vala began giggling and clutched at Sam's arm. "Alright then, I'll be your maid-of-honour. And I'll make sure Carolyn and Cassie look fabulous! Leave it all to me."

"Thank you, Vala. I know you will." Sam hugged her friend. "I just wish... I wish Janet were here too." Vala nodded and let Sam bury her face in her hair.

"I think I would have liked Dr. Fraiser from the way you've talked about her." Vala said gently and Sam nodded. "Not sure if she'd have liked me though." Sam laughed softly.

"She would have loved your sense of humour, Vala. I know it." Sam pulled away from the embrace and gave Vala's hand a squeeze. They sat in silence for a while, Sam watching Cameron talking with Teal'c, certain Vala was watching Daniel talking with the chaplain. Sam was going to get married. She smiled for long moments at the thought. She would have to go talk to Mark. It would be nice if he could give her away. Or at least be there. She sighed lightly. She was sure Cam's family would descend on Colorado Springs in force. She hoped she could bring the family she could lay claim to as well. Vala interrupted her musings which caused her to turn towards the former smuggler.

"There's one thing I'm not sure I understand, Samantha." Vala looked between her and Cameron for a moment. "Don't weddings usually take place during the day? Why are you both so set on an evening ceremony?" Sam smiled softly and looked at Cameron again. He turned to look at her as if sensing her scrutiny and gave her a little wave which she returned.

"The stars only come out at night."

* * *

To be continued in 'Voices from a Lost Time'


End file.
